STRAWMAN

Straw man

A straw man, also known in the UK as an Aunt Sally, is a common type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition, and to refute it, without ever having actually refuted the original position. This technique has been used throughout history in polemical debate, particularly in arguments about highly charged, emotional issues. In those cases the false victory is often loudly or conspicuously celebrated.

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Straw Man

The Scarecrow, later named Straw Man, is a fictional character, a super villain appearing in the Marvel Comics universe.

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straw man

Noun

  1. A doll or scarecrow (particularly one stuffed with straw).
  2. An insubstantial concept, idea, endeavor or argument, particularly one deliberately set up to be weakly supported, so that it can be easily knocked down; especially to impugn the strength of any related thing or idea.
  3. An innocuous person or someone of nominal or lesser importance, as a front man or straw boss.

Verb

  1. to falsely attribute an insubstantial argument (a straw man argument) to another through direct declaration or indirect implication
    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-"
    Person B: "Well I never said -you- said all, so don't straw man me either. But you didn't say 'some' cats or 'most' cats so I wanted to interject in case others assumed the lack of qualifier to imply or imply all cats."


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: straw man
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

strawman

Noun



The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: strawman
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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