factualadj.n.

1820–32 S. T. Coleridge Marginalia (2000) VI. 168 The Factual Nerve, by which I have hitherto been able to discriminate veracity from falsehood, and Deceit from Delusion.

1833 R. H. Horne Expos. False Medium & Barriers excluding Men of Genius from Public 104 The various factual details and allusions contained in the foregoing pages, can have no pretensions to originality of information.

1884 R. F. Burton Bk. of Sword 201 Our factual knowledge of Mesopotamian civilisation.

1925 G. M. Gathorne-Hardy in A. J. Toynbee Surv. Internat. Affairs Pref. p. vi The primary object of these publications is to enable speakers and writers to gather..the factual material.

1987 V. Glendinning Rebecca West ii. i. 46 Wells made many factual errors about his mistresses' backgrounds.

2011 C. H. Edwards Educ. Change iv. 64 The erroneous assumption that being ‘educated’ is essentially the accumulation of factual information.

1846 T. De Quincey Antigone in Tait's Edinb. Mag. Feb. 114/2 Any direct factual imitation, resting upon painted figures..would have been no art whatsoever.

1888 R. F. Burton tr. Supplemental Nights III. p. x I can..promise to all ‘Aladdinists’ a rich harvest of facts which wholly displace those hitherto assumed to be factual.

1949 A. B. Kuhn Shadow Third Cent. xii. 248 It is impossible to credit as a factual occurrence unless one has given years of study to detect its subtle evidences.

1994 D. Guterson Snow Falling on Cedars (1995) xviii. 179 Hatsue's father..asked Dr Oshiro if in fact there were submariners and if the rumors of an invasion of Oregon and California were factual.

1941 Boston Globe 2 Jan. 6/4 South Station Theatre to Show Factual Film... The story of cheap electricity and the near revolution it has wrought in the lives of rural Americans, is the subject of 'Power and the Land', documentary film.

1958 Sun (Baltimore) 20 Nov. 10/4 ‘Twentieth Century’ will offer an account of the rise and fall of the Argentine dictator, Juan Peron, and his late wife, Evita. For CBS-TV, this will be a solid three hours of high-powered, factual television.

1990 J. Eberts & T. Ilott My Indecision is Final xxxviii. 381 Papers were commissioned: John Gau on factual programming, Derek Granger on drama and films, and Steve Walsh on co-productions and US representation.

2012 Guardian 11 June (Documentary Suppl.) 4/1 Channel 4 pioneered second-screen watching for factual programming with its Embarrassing Bodies medical show back in 2008.

1855 Dublin Univ. Mag. May ii. 550 Among the glories of poetry we may place.., the translation of the factual into the imaginative equivalent, without the sacrifice of literal truth.

1876 W. Alexander Bampton Lect. (1877) v. 144 The facts and the history are Jewish; but there is a typical in the factual.

1933 R. G. Hoskins Tides of Life ix. 227 We are dealing here with conjecture which, however plausible, carries little of the authority of the factual.

1995 R. Sargent Diffident Naturalist vi. 132 The domain of the factual is composed of claims about existence.

1852 W. Pulsford tr. J. Müller Christian Doctr. Sin I. 28 The universal moral condition of the human race, as it factually exists.

1884 R. F. Burton Bk. of Sword 149 Nilotic allegories and mysteries which the vulgar understood factually and literally.

1907 Month Feb. 131 God's work should factually be done, through him though unaware.

1966 K. Amis Anti-Death League 106 Something he must factually and officially satisfy himself about.

2006 K. Pyrek Forensic Nursing vi. 116/1 A protocol that ensures that each survivor of sexual assault will receive medically and factually accurate and written and oral information about emergency contraception.