factitious
/fakˈtɪʃəs
/adjective
Artificially created or developed: a largely factitious national identity...
- Occasionally, epilepsy can be mistaken for narcolepsy, and factitious simulation of narcolepsy has been described.
- People with factitious disorder feign or actually induce illness in themselves, typically to garner the nurturance of others.
- She was said to be suffering from factitious illness by proxy, a disorder previously referred to as Munchausen's syndrome by proxy.
Derivatives
factitiously
/ adverb ...- Initially presenting doctors with factitiously ill children seems in some cases to become more direct manipulation, with complaints being directed at the doctors.
- But in addition to this, owing to the large portions of mercury, irritation of the intestinal canal may be produced factitiously which will be a complication not to be desired.
- During multiple hospitalizations, she developed episodes of fever of unknown origin and was believed to have factitiously elevated her temperature.
factitiousness
- I guess that there's some part of me beneath all the factitiousness that really hopes life will have the happily ever after ending after all.
- He runs through the disadvantages: the journal has no ‘mission’, no necessity; it forces the writer to strike poses, and in its triviality, inessentiality, and factitiousness incessantly opens the comic question, ‘Am I?’
- The form or ‘factitiousness’ of the anecdote provides the shape and the subjectivity of the account.
Origin
Mid 17th century (in the general sense 'made by human skill or effort'): from Latin facticius 'made by art', from facere 'do, make'.