Sophism
noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 The school of the sophists in antiquity; their beliefs and method of teaching philosophy and rhetoric. historical, uncountable
"Within the framework of democracy a new ideology, born of sophism, took root and proclaimed the rights of the individual in all spheres, political as well as moral."
- 2 Archaic spelling of Sufism. alt-of, archaic, uncountable
- 3 a deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone wordnet
- 4 A flawed argument, superficially correct in its reasoning, usually designed to deceive. countable
"The hope of improvement is a quality at once so strong and so excellent in the human mind, that I, for one, disapprove of any sophism—or, if you will, argument—that tends to repress it."
- 5 An intentional fallacy. countable
Show 2 more definitions
- 6 Sophistic, fallacious reasoning or argumentation. uncountable
"What! No demonstration of the Being of God! No abstract arguments! No proofs a priori! Are these, which have hitherto been so much insisted on by philosophers, all fallacy, all sophism? Can we reach no further in this subject than experience and probability?"
- 7 Wisdom and knowledge. countable, rare
Example
More examples"Within the framework of democracy a new ideology, born of sophism, took root and proclaimed the rights of the individual in all spheres, political as well as moral."
Etymology
From Middle English sophim, from Old French soffime, sofime, sofisme, sophisme, from Latin sophisma (“fallacy, sophism”), from Ancient Greek σόφῐσμᾰ (sóphĭsmă), from σοφίζω (sophízō) + -μα (-ma).
Related phrases
More for "sophism"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.