Fact

Latin factum — a thing done, a deed. From facere — to do, make. Originally meant an act or deed — something that had been done. The sense of 'something known to be true' developed gradually through the 16th and 17th centuries.

The phrase 'alternative facts' entered the language in 2017 and crystallized a long-building crisis: the word 'fact' was already doing more work than it could hold. The move from 'fact' to 'factual claim' to 'my facts' traces the collapse of shared epistemic ground.