Fact

Also 6 fackte, factt, 6–7 facte, 7 fack. [ad. L. fact-um thing done, neut. pa. pple. of facĕre to do. First in 16th c.; the earlier adoption of the OF. form survives with narrowed sense as FEAT.]

  1.  A thing done or performed. † a. in neutral sense: An action, deed, course of conduct. Occas. = effect. Also, action in general; deeds, as opposed to words. Obs.

1545.  Joye, Exp. Dan., xi. Z vij b. Let emprours and kinges folow this godly kynges fact.

1592.  West, 1st Pt. Symbol., § 2 E. Right … is the chiefest cause of obligations, the fact of man the remote cause.

1605.  P. Woodhouse, Flea (1877), 13. The minde doth make the fact, or good or ill.

a. 1626.  Bacon, Sylva, x. 243. As they are not to mistake the Causes of these Operations; So much lesse are they to mistake the Fact, or effect.

1643.  Prynne, Sov. Power Parl., App. 193. The fact of him who acts the Gardian, is imputed to the Co-gardians.

1708.  Swift, The Sentiments of a Church-of-England Man. In reading a history of facts done a thousand years ago … we are apt to find our hopes and wishes engaged on a sudden in favour of one side more than another.

1745.  P. Thomas, Jrnl. Anson’s Voy., 206. At length he committed a Fact that completed the Destruction of himself and all his Family.

1816.  Jane Austen, Emma, II. xii. 226–7. Enscombe however was gracious in fact, if not in word.

  † b.  A noble or brave deed, an exploit; a feat (of valor or skill). Obs.

1543.  Grafton, Continuation of Hardyng’s Chronicle, 603. For the whiche noble facte, the kynge created hym afterwarde duke of Norfolke.

1586.  Marlowe, 1st Pt. Tamburl., III. ii. His facts of war and blood.

1605.  Stow, Ann., 481. Henry Hotespurre … taketh prayes, exercising laudable factes.

1667.  Milton, P. L., II. 124. He who most excels in fact of Arms.

1730.  A. Gordon, Maffei’s Amphith., 321. Whether this wonderful Fact was performed in the Theatre or Amphitheatre, Xiphiline’s method in using that word, sometimes for the one, sometimes for the other of these Buildings, leaves us in doubt.

  c.  An evil deed, a crime. In the 16th and 17th c. the commonest sense; now Obs. exc. in to confess the fact and after, before the fact, in which the sense approaches that of 2.

1539.  Act 31 Hen. VIII., c. 8. Euery such … person … shall be adiudged a traytour, and his facte high treason.

1551.  T. Wilson, Logike (1580), 47. Oratours do vse to marke thinges that goe before the facte, as whether he hated the man or no.

1577.  Harrison, England, II. xi. (1877), I. 223. He is … hanged … neere the place where the fact was committed.

1603.  Philotus, lxxxiii. For to commit sa foull ane fack.

a. 1626.  Bacon, Max. & Uses Com. Law, viii. (1635), 34. Any accessary before the fact is subject to all the contingencies pregnant of the fact, if they be pursuances of the same fact: As if a man command or counsell one to rob a man, or beat him grievously, and murther ensue, in either case he is accessary to the murther.

1689.  Col. Rec. Pennsylv., I. 252. In a Provinciall Court held in y^e County of Kent, where y^e ffact was Committed.

a. 1715.  Burnet, Own Time (1766), I. 21. All who were concerned in that vile fact were pardoned.

1769.  Blackstone, Comm., IV. 39. Accessories after the fact being still allowed the benefit of clergy in all cases.

1772.  Ann. Reg., 95. He was carried before Justice Russell, where he confessed the fact.

1869.  Freeman, Norm. Conq. (1876), III. xii. 92. An absolution after the fact might be one.

  † d.  Actual guilt (as opposed to suspicion). Obs.

1632.  Massinger, Emperor of East, V. ii.

  † e.  An action cognizable, or having an effect in law. Obs.

a. 1626.  Bacon, Max. & Uses Com. Law, xxi. (1635), 80–1. If tenant intaile discontinue, or suffer a descent, or doe any other fact whatsoever, that after his death without issue it shall be lawfull for me to enter.

  † 2.  The making, doing, or performing. In the (very) fact = in the (very) act. Obs.

1548.  Hall, Chron., 157 b. These three articles he denied either for fact or thought.

1593.  Shaks., 2 Hen. VI., II. i. 173.

1616.  B. Jonson, Devil an Ass, III. i. Wks. (Rtldg.), 360/1.

1626.  Bacon, Sylva, § 795. Those Effects, which are wrought by the Percussion of the Sense, and by Things in Fact, are produced likewise, in some degree, by the Imagination.

1650–3.  Dissertio de Pace, xi., in Phenix (1708), II. 382. Causes, but not of our fact and our avoiding.

1712.  Addison, The Spectator, No. 311, 26 Feb., ¶ 1. I have myself caught a young jackanapes, with a pair of silver-fringed gloves, in the very fact.

1768.  Goldsm., Good-n. Man, I. i. I caught him in the fact.

1807–8.  W. Irving, Salmagundi (1824), 20. She was detected by friend Anthony in the very fact of laughing most obstreperously at the description of the little dancing Frenchman.

  † 3.  Math. = FACTUM 3. Obs.

1673.  Kersey, Algebra, I. iv. (1725), 15. A third Quantity which is called the Product, the Fact, or the Rectangle.

1721–1800.  in Bailey.

  4.  Something that has really occurred or is actually the case; something certainly known to be of this character; hence, a particular truth known by actual observation or authentic testimony, as opposed to what is merely inferred, or to a conjecture or fiction; a datum of experience, as distinguished from the conclusions that may be based upon it.

  [In class. Lat. factum had occasionally the extended sense of ‘event, occurrence’; hence in scholastic Lat. was developed the sense above explained, which belongs to all the Romanic equivalents: Fr. fait, It. fatto, Sp. hecho.]

1632.  J. Hayward, trans. Biondi’s Eromena, 21. They resolved that the Admirall should goe disguised … to assure himselfe of the fact.

1691.  T. H[ale], Acc. New Invent., 52. The said Commissioners are to report to this Board the Truth of the Fact.

1745.  in Col. Rec. Pennsylv., V. 13. These Facts plainly shew that the French [etc.].

1749.  Smollett, Gil Bl., x. i. That mystery, by whose inscrutable decrees the lives of men have in all ages been determined, is now laid open to the rude, untutored gaze of blockheads, novices, and mountebanks. Facts are stubborn things; and ere long the very stones will cry aloud against the rascality of these new practitioners: lapides clamabunt!

1774.  Goldsm., Nat. Hist. (1776), VI. 154. The reader, instead of observations or facts, is presented with a long list of names.

1782.  Paine, Lett. Abbé Raynal (1791), 26. How these things have established themselves, it is difficult to account for: But they are facts, and facts are more powerful than arguments.

1809–10.  Coleridge, The Friend (1865), 62. It is an undoubted fact of human nature, that the sense of impossibility quenches all will.

1836.  Thirlwall, Greece, II. xv. 283. One fact destroys this fiction.

1875.  Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), III. 611, Timaeus. The very great advantage of being a fact and not a fiction.

  b.  In apposition with a following clause, or with const. of. Now often used where the earlier lang. would have employed a clause or gerundial phrase as subject or as the regimen of a preposition; cf. mod. use of ‘the circumstance that.’

1722.  De Foe, Plague (1756), 72. There may be some antient Persons alive in the Parish, who can justify the Fact of this, and are able to shew even in what Part of the Church-Yard the Pit lay.

1846.  Mill, Logic, I. iii. § 11. The fact of resemblance between relations is sometimes called analogy.

1851.  Carpenter, Man. Phys. (ed. 2), 244. The physiological fact of the peculiar connection between the Mind and the Brain.

  ¶ c.  Occas. applied concr. to a person, an institution, etc. (A strained use.)

1858.  Hawthorne, Fr. & It. Jrnls. (1873), I. 14. We, who look back upon the first Napoleon as one of the eternal facts of the past, a great bowlder in history, cannot well estimate how momentary and unsubstantial the great Captain may have appeared to those who beheld his rise out of obscurity.

1877.  Owen, in Wellesley’s Desp., p. xxi. The British Empire in India was already a great fact.

  5.  Often loosely used for: Something that is alleged to be, or conceivably might be, a ‘fact.’

a. 1729.  S. Clarke, Serm., lxix. Wks. 1738, I. 428. It would have been absurd to alleage in preaching to vnbelievers, a Fact which itself presupposed the Truth of Christ’s mission.

1793–7.  Spirit Pub. Jrnls. (1797), I. 356. If another soldier should call you a jail bird, and the truth of the fact be notorious.

1824.  Westminster Rev., II. 209. This is, as usual, a false fact, supported by a supposed motive.

1831.  Blackw. Mag., xxix. June, 900/1. The minds of the lower and middle orders would have an antidote provided against the poison of false notions, and, if we may use an expression which, we believe, is in Junius, false facts, which the ignorant, always credulous, and especially in times of such political excitement, unsuspectingly and greedily swallow from the hands of designing, and dangerous, and wicked men, who, they suppose, are their friends and physicians, but who are the worst of quacks and enemies.

1832.  Bp. Thirlwall, Remains (1878), III. 185. But I do not mean to deny the fact. Ibid. (187[?]), 489. I am not concerned to deny the fact.

Mod.  The writer’s facts are far from trustworthy.

  6.  (Without a and pl.) That which is of the nature of a fact; what has actually happened or is the case; truth attested by direct observation or authentic testimony; reality. Matter of fact: a subject of discussion belonging to the domain of fact, as distinguished from matter of inference, of opinion, of law, etc. (See also MATTER.)

1581.  E. Campion, in Confer., II. (1584), M b. He speaketh of a matter of fact.

1641.  Evelyn, Mem. (1857), I. 31. A … description of the matter-of-fact.

1736.  Butler, Anal., I. iii. Wks. 1874, I. 50. An instance … collected from experience and present matter of fact.

1745–9.  Rep. Cond. Sir J. Cope, 115. ‘It is Fact’ that something uncommon was expected.

1794.  Paley, Evid. (1825), II. 271. The evangelists wrote from fact, and not from imagination.

1832.  Sir G. C. Lewis, Remarks on the Use and Abuse of Some Political Terms, iii. 29. To deny the power of the legislature to dispose of it [property] at pleasure, is to confound expediency and justice with fact, and to conclude that what ought not to be done, cannot be done.

1836.  J. Gilbert, Chr. Atonem., iv. (1852), 120. This case of deliverance, alike from the pangs of guilt and from external suffering, which we have just supposed, is fact.

1875.  Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), I. 241, Ion, Introduction. Imagination is often at war with reason and fact.

1878.  Huxley, Physiography, 68. As a matter of fact we rarely, if ever, experience either one or the other of these extreme conditions.

  b.  In fact: in reality (cf. sense 1 and indeed). Now often used parenthetically in an epexegetical statement, or when a more comprehensive assertion is substituted for that which has just been made. In point of fact: with regard to matters of fact; also (and now usually) = in fact.

1707.  Addison, Pres. State War, 36. If this were true in Fact, I don’t see any tolerable colour for such a conclusion.

1711.  Swift, Jrnl. to Stella, 10 Nov. Three or four great people are to see there are no mistakes in point of fact.

1732.  Berkeley, Alciphr., II. § 24. In whatever light you may consider it, this is in fact a solid Benefit.

1774.  Goldsm., Nat. Hist. (1776), I. 38. In fact, a thousand questions might be asked … which he would not find it easy to answer.

1818.  Jas. Mill, Brit. India, II. V. ix. 712. In point of fact, the influence exerted upon the Directors through the Court of Proprietors has never been great.

1871.  Smiles, Charac., ii. (1876), 49. Gray was, in fact, a feminine man—shy, reserved, and wanting in energy,—but thoroughly irreproachable in life and character.

1888.  A. W. Streane, Jeremiah, 102. In point of fact Jeremiah was absent from Jerusalem.

Mod.  He is very independent—extravagantly so, in fact.

  c.  The fact (of the matter): the truth with regard to the subject under discussion.

1875.  Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), I. 23, Charmides. Whereas the fact is that I enquire with you into the truth.

  7.  Law. In sing. and pl. The circumstances and incidents of a case, looked at apart from their legal bearing. Attorney in fact: see ATTORNEY.

a. 1718.  Penn, Tracts, Wks. 1726, I. 501. The Jury is judge of Law and Fact.

1892.  J. M. Lely, Wharton’s Law Lex., 616/1. When a jury is sworn it decides all the issues of fact.