noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A decontextualized quotation from a document (often, but not always, a book of the Bible) to establish a proposition rhetorically through an appeal to authority.

Verb

1. 1
   To use decontextualized quotations from a document (often, but not always, a book of the Bible) to establish a proposition rhetorically through an appeal to authority.

Etymology

From proof + text.

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