Meaning

noun something resembling a fact; unverified (often invented) information that is given credibility because it appeared in print

noun a brief (usually one sentence and usually trivial) news item

originFrom fact + -oid (“similar, but not the same”); coined by American writer Norman Mailer in 1973 in Marilyn: A Biography, defined as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority".

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0