A fastidious grammarian's peeve...though this is less grammar than logic: when people use the word "fact" to indicate something they don't believe is true.
Both stylistically and logically the use of "fact" as a synonym for "idea, proposition, claim, notion, view, argument, position, opinion" etc., or even as semantically meaningless dead weight in front of the word "that," is simply horrid.
"I completely reject the fact that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself."
Well then, you don't think it's a fact, do you? So what are you saying? That it's not a fact? Then why did you call it a fact? Or are you actually saying that you DO believe the man killed himself and you just can't reconcile yourself to the terrible fact? Maybe you feel he was too young to die..."Jeffrey we hardly knew ye"? (Of course, that's not what anybody would mean by such a sentence but, logically speaking, it's the far more precise way to understand it.)
So why would "I don't believe Jeffrey Epstein killed himself" be, in any way, a weaker sentence than "I completely reject the fact that..."? It isn't, of course. It's tons crisper, neater, stronger. Or if you are really driven to use "reject," then how about "I completely reject the claim that..."?
I think people throw the word "fact" in for two or three reasons: 1) it is the quickest, intellectually least demanding "go-to," 2) people sense SOMETHING has to be there (in fact, it often doesn't), and, 3) a convoluted sort of semantical-syntactical mental gymnastic lends the usage a bogus cachet of authority, as if the person, by saying "I reject the fact that..." has actually established the factual refutation of the thing. No. Actually the person has proposed the existence of a fact to which he cannot reconcile himself. Precisely the opposite of what he wants to say.
Stopping to think about it for a moment, what does it really mean to "reject a fact"? It means the thing is there, a fait accompli (literally), something that has happened and can't be "un-happened." Like, for instance, September 11th. Nobody--no, not even using the phrase in the popular illogical way--"rejects the fact" that September 11th happened. Not even whacko conspiracy theorists who deny there were real airplanes involved argue that the Twin Towers are still there. Whatever one might think about HOW or WHY it happened, everybody knows the thing, in the broadest sense, happened. It's a fact. So what would it mean to "reject" that fact? Anything at all? Perhaps in a ridiculously strained, stretched way, as if to say, "I refuse to admit that awful reality into my consciousness." But, still, it's a rather silly way to say it.
You can find, however, plenty of people out there, in the "threads," continuing to "reject the fact" that Islamist terrorist-murderers flew the planes into the WTC, the Pentagon and the field in PA. Of course when they "reject the fact," they think they're saying they reject the idea, dispute the view, deny the claim, dismiss the theory.... In reality they are doing literally what they say: rejecting the fact. Which says it all, doesn't it? That and $2.50 will get you a latte.
Besides the logically short-circuiting way of using "fact" to mean anything BUT a fact, there is also the outright dead-weight way of using it, i.e., when it is a synonym of nothing at all.
"What do you think about the fact of Harry and Meghan leaving the royal family?" (I'm quoting popularese, here; no need to point out to me that Harry is still Charles' son and William's brother; if there's anything I can't stand, it's a stickler.)
"The fact of" is 100% semantic-stylistic dead weight in that sentence. It isn't even a synonym, as above, for "view, opinion, theory, position," etc. No, here it is just NOTHING. It's about the deadest of dead weights, semantically, that I can conceive of. Take the phrase out and the sentence is: ONLY. BETTER.
It seems to me people resort to this dead-weight brand of "fact" in order to, again, lend their sentence a cachet of gravitas, but the cachet is perfectly "faux." Like a Rolex you can pick up for a neat $45 off a sheet on a Manhattan sidewalk.
