Like the common words "fact" and "factual," "factitious" ultimately comes from the Latin verb facere, meaning "to do" or "to make." But in current use, "factitious" has little to do with things factual and true - in fact, "factitious" often implies the opposite. The most immediate ancestor of "factitious" is the Latin adjective facticius, meaning "made by art" or "artificial." When English speakers first adopted the word as "factitious" in the 17th century, it meant "produced by human effort or skill" (rather than arising from nature). This meaning gave rise to such meanings as "artificial" and "false" or "feigned."