tu quoque
/tuːˈkwoʊkwiː/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.87 in modern English
26
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An argument whereby an accusation or insult is turned back on the accuser; same to you
Example Sentences
- "And then they meet us with miserable tu quoques—tu quoques, gentlemen, which are the meanest form of logic, and, in my opinion, the most contemptible development of statesmanship."
- "In the long run, the facile tu quoque arguments, such as those offered by Massu on the Alleg case, can only lead to an endless escalation of horror and degradation."
- "Not all tu quoques, of course, are countercritical. For example the anti–logical-positivist and antirelativist tu quoques encountered in Chapter Three purport to discover a “reflexive weakness” in the positive arguments of their opponents such that when such arguments are turned back on themselves the result is an absurdity."
- "Tu quoques shift the attention away from the weakness of one’s own argument. Political platforms are rife with tu quoques: each political party accuses the other of some atrocity or oversight wihout responding to any of the charges laid against them."
- "The idealising side of Furman's construction exposes itself to the tu quoque retorts with which Putin and his aides now relish silencing criticism by the West."
- "I presented the mouth of the bottle in a slanting direction toward her. In an instant, she with her fingers contracted the lips of her tu quoque so as to produce a narrow curved stream, so correctly aimed that at least one-third actually entered the bottle."
Etymology
From Latin tu (“you”) quoque (“also”).