straw man
20
7.0
- noun
- /strɔː mæn/
:
hombre de paja
- Like Clark's statement, this is a straw man argument meant to distort what McCain is actually saying.
- straw man argument
- set up a straw man
- knock down a straw man
And I think that's really just kind of a, a straw man that that people put out there.
- And I think that's really just kind of a, a straw man that that people put out there.
- Saying I do or that the left does is a straw man.
- Well, you know, I think, I think articles like this are usually straw man argument.
- Either way, that is rendered in service of what is ultimately a straw man.
- And then you can decide whether Kant has them correct or not, or whether he's creating straw men.
- You should when you're arguing against someone, you should steel man them, which is the opposite of a straw man.
- There's a really common straw man argument against right to repair that most often seems to equate right to repair with easy to repair.
- Barclays could leave out relevant important transactions and sort of this straw man design.
Examples
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Wait, wait, you're creating a straw man.
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Calm down a bit and quit fabricating straw men by which to justify your rants.
Blog text (2) -
Also, do not make a straw man out of John Adams either.
Blog text (3) -
And I think that's really just kind of a, a straw man that that people put out there.
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So that's kind of the straw man, I think, against the school choice movement.
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However, in a classic straw man argument, he decried a process that never happened.
Academic text (2016) -
Therefore, instead of debating straw men, I prefer to focus on a few concrete examples taken from my recent personal experiences.
Academic text (1997) -
You are creating a straw man fallacy with that statement and then summarily knocking it down.
Blog text (6) -
But this characterization of idealism is a straw man, set up to be knocked down from the pro-materialist standpoint.
Academic text (2018) -
In the debate, he critiqued a straw man argument that unfairly misrepresented the challenger’s position.
Synonyms
12
8.1
An argument someone makes look weaker so others can easily attack it
7
9.8
Use of clever but false arguments to trick people
1
8.5
A reason that seems good but is actually wrong
Antonyms
How Accurate
Surface Forms
Morphology
straw + man
The literal constituents 'straw' + 'man' yield a concrete image (a man made of straw) rather than the abstract notion of a misrepresented argument, so the exact rhetorical sense is not directly derivable from the parts. However, the metaphor (something insubstantial set up to be knocked down) can be inferred by learners with some exposure to argumentative contexts and many languages have a similar idiom, making it partially but not fully predictable to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Straw man may come from the image of making a man from straw and then easily knocking it down. Because the straw figure is easy to destroy, the phrase means 'an argument set up to be easily attacked'.