scissor statement
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.91 in modern English
20
Scrabble Score
16
Letters
4
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A polarising and incendiary topic, opinion or phrase.
Example Sentences
- "The Ground Zero mosque was a scissor statement that divided Americans."
- "Brexit, by its nature, was a perfect scissor statement for almost everyone in the UK: the population was split into ‘Leavers’ and ‘Remainers’, and mutual outrage at the beliefs and actions of the other side became commonplace, as did personal abuse."
- "I'm not sure there's been any recent news event that's as much of a Scissor Statement as the homeless subway death. Reading different accounts on this, you'd think they were describing two completely different incidents. Like this was designed to be maximally divisive."
- "The world avoids falling into perpetual low-grade warfare only because she accidentally creates a scissor statement that tears apart the company before its work is finished. The story captured the sense of social media as a rolling referendum on every subject under the sun."
Etymology
Coined by American psychiatrist and blogger Scott Alexander Siskind (writing as "Scott Alexander") in his 2018 short story “Sort By Controversial”, where he wrote: “In some dead language, scissor shares a root with schism. A scissor is a schism-er, a schism-creator.”