straw man
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.98 in modern English
Meaning
noun
A doll or scarecrow, particularly one stuffed with straw.
noun
An innocuous person or someone of nominal or lesser importance, as a front man or straw boss.
noun
An insubstantial concept, idea, endeavor or argument, particularly one deliberately set up to be weakly supported, e.g. by misrepresenting an opponent's argument by broadening or narrowing the scope of a premise, so that it can be easily knocked down; especially to impugn the strength of any related or contrasted thing or idea.
noun
Synonym of straw buyer.
verb
To falsely attribute an insubstantial argument (a straw man argument) to another through direct declaration or indirect implication; to put words in someone's mouth.
Transitive verb
Example Sentences
- "This Euler inequality recurs as either the cornerstone or the straw man in many theories contained in this book."
- "a tentative straw-man spec"
- "If a broker or a salesperson attempts to use a straw man to purchase property for which he or she has a listing, the real estate person must specifically disclose in writing to the seller this relationship with the buyer."
- "Person A: "Cats have claws." Person B: "Not all cats have claws: some are declawed." Person A: "Don't straw man me; I never said all.""
- "1996 [Vale Press], Ralph H. Johnson, The Rise of Informal Logic, Windsor Studies in Argumentation, 2014, E-edition, page 178, I have also argued that he is guilty of straw manning Copi and that his charge of shoddy reasoning against Kahane makes use of an equivocation on the concept of fallacy."
- "¹¹ It should, however, also be noted that in certain cases later "neo-corporatist authors" straw manned the pluralist model, making it easier to criticise (Nedelmann and Meier, 1979: 94)."