sophistry

noun

soph·ist·ry ˈsä-fə-strē

plural sophistries

Synonyms of sophistry next

: subtly deceptive reasoning or argumentation

: sophism sense 1

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Sophistry Has Roots in Greek Philosophy

The original Sophists were ancient Greek teachers of rhetoric and philosophy prominent in the 5th century B.C. In their heyday, these philosophers were considered adroit in their reasoning, but later philosophers (particularly Plato) described them as sham philosophers, out for money and willing to say anything to win an argument. Thus sophist (which comes from Greek sophistēs, meaning "wise man" or "expert") earned a negative connotation as "a captious or fallacious reasoner." Sophistry is reasoning that seems plausible on a superficial level but is actually unsound, or reasoning that is used to deceive.

Examples of sophistry in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Dan McLaughlin has exposed the sophistry in the legal arguments on offer from the administration’s defenders. —

Noah Rothman, National Review, 9 Oct. 2023 Dickie, a student at Trinity College, wanders into a club debate, where he’s bewitched by the quicksilver sophistry of one of his peers, Willie, who is openly gay. —

Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, 22 Aug. 2023 Justice Kagan’s hollow sophistry in the student-loan-debt case would ignore the words of the law and give the president limitless authority. —

Dan McLaughlin, National Review, 13 July 2023 While much of the book is devoted to contrasting the subtle reality of judicial decision-making with the crude portrayal that increasingly dominates popular discourse, the subtleties to which Breyer draws our attention are mostly sophistry—as Breyer more or less concedes. —

Ryan D. Doerfler, The New Republic, 13 Oct. 2021 People know just enough to engage in sophistry so as to confuse and convince the choir, and bluster among the ignorant. —

Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 15 Sep. 2013 Ascribing causality to any one tactic is sophistry. —

WSJ, 23 Dec. 2021 Notice FDR’s painstaking enumeration of the elements of his program, and his puncturing of his opponents’ sophistry. —

Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 3 Nov. 2021 The central irony of U2’s career might be that, having become sophisticated critics of media sophistry, the band simplified its outlook just before 9/11. —

Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker, 8 Aug. 2021 See More

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sophistry.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.