a. [f. FACT sb., after the analogy of ACTUAL.] Pertaining to or concerned with facts; of the nature of fact, actual, real.
a. 1834. Coleridge, Notes Southey’s Life Wesley (1858), II. 8. That I should quench the ray and paralyse the factual nerve, by which I have hitherto been able to discriminate veracity from falsehood.
1846. Whewell, Syst. Morality, iii. 58. We can never present the Factual part of a Fact, separate from the Ideal part.
1846. De Quincey, Antigone of Sophocles, Wks. XIV. 211. Any direct factual imitation, resting upon painted figures … would have been no art whatsoever.
1884. R. F. Burton, Book of Sword, 201. Our factual knowledge of Mesopotamian civilisation.
absol. 1876. W. Alexander, Bampton Lect. v. (1877), 144. The facts and the history are Jewish; but there is a typical in the factual.
Hence Factually adv., in a factual manner; as matter of fact.
1852. Pulsford, trans. Muller’s Chr. Doctr. Sin, I. 28. The universal moral condition of the human race, as it factually exists.
1884. R. F. Burton, Book of Sword, 149. Nilotic allegories and mysteries which the vulgar understood factually and literally.
