Factual

How to spell factual

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce factual

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does factual mean?

1. adjectiveBased on or concerned with facts; objectively true rather than opinion or invention.

Factual in a sentence

• The report stuck to a factual account of what happened during the meeting.

• Editors checked the article for factual accuracy before it went to print.

Where does factual come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adjective grows from the noun 'fact', which English took from the Latin factum, meaning 'a thing done' or 'a deed'. That noun was itself the neuter past participle of facere, the broad Latin verb 'to do' or 'to make', the same root that underlies words such as 'manufacture', 'factory', and 'fashion'. 'Fact' entered English in the 1500s, at first meaning an action or deed before settling into its modern sense of a thing known to be true. 'Factual' is a comparatively young coinage, appearing in the early 1800s, built on the model of the older word 'actual', which is why the two share that distinctive -ctual ending. The spelling trap lives in that ending: writers know the word starts plainly as 'fact', then must add the -ual that the 'do, make' root never literally announces.

How the word is built

• fact (from Latin factum: a thing done)
• -ual (adjective suffix)