What does "contextomy" mean?

The act or practice of quoting somebody out of context, often to give a false impression of what they said.

What is a synonym for "contextomy"?

Common synonyms include: quote mining.

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
The act or practice of quoting somebody out of context, often to give a false impression of what they said. countable, uncountable
"…saying that the Literary Gazette had committed the Chicago Tribune's habitual crime of contextomy against me."

"…saying that the Literary Gazette had committed the Chicago Tribune's habitual crime of contextomy against me."

From context + -tomy.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.