fact vs theory

fact

noun
  • Something actual as opposed to invented. 

  • An individual value or measurement at the lowest level of granularity in a data warehouse. 

  • An objective consensus on a fundamental reality that has been agreed upon by a substantial number of experts. 

  • Something which is real. 

  • A wrongful or criminal deed. 

  • Something concrete used as a basis for further interpretation. 

  • Information about a particular subject, especially actual conditions and/or circumstances. 

intj
  • Used before making a statement to introduce it as a trustworthy one. 

theory

noun
  • The underlying principles or methods of a given technical skill, art etc., as opposed to its practice. 

  • A coherent statement or set of ideas that explains observed facts or phenomena and correctly predicts new facts or phenomena not previously observed, or which sets out the laws and principles of something known or observed; a hypothesis confirmed by observation, experiment etc. 

  • A field of study attempting to exhaustively describe a particular class of constructs. 

  • A set of axioms together with all statements derivable from them; or, a set of statements which are deductively closed. Equivalently, a formal language plus a set of axioms (from which can then be derived theorems). The statements may be required to all be bound (i.e., to have no free variables). 

  • A hypothesis or conjecture. 

  • A description of an event or system that is considered to be accurate. 

How often have the words fact and theory occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )