The Fact of the Matter and the Matter of the Fact

What is the difference between the fact of the matter and the matter of the fact?

That question puzzled the minds of everyone who attended Professor Emeritus Gemino H. Abad's Centennial lecture about sense for language last Friday, February 29, 2008. I would have to agree that it was definitely a mind-boggling one.

To further explain it, let us first define fact and matter. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary states that fact is something that exists or simply, a piece of information while matter is a subject of interest or concern.

We could say that both really have a difference when their order in the sentence structure is interchanged.

The noun fact functions often as an inexact name for an idea, a hope, a wish, or some other vaguely conceived “thing” and often simply as a grammatical placeholder stuck into the sentence until the speaker or writer can figure out a destination and a way to approach it. The fact of the matter means the truth about something that is talked about. It is the actual existence of something of great significance. The main concern of this phrase is the real proposition on a controversial issue. We dig deeper on the fact, not on the matter.

The matter of the fact means the controversies behind the existing knowledge. We delve deeper on the issues a fact is raising. We talk about the circumstances a particular issue has.

Both phrases have their own functions even though they have exactly the same word. But if you change their structure, their meanings will definitely be changed.