Steelman

name, noun, verb

name, noun, verb ·2 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A masculine steelworker.
  2. 2
    a male worker engaged in making steel wordnet
  3. 3
    A stronger version of an argument that one is about to critically analyze.

    "a "steel man" is an improvement of someone's position or argument that is harder to defeat than their originally stated position or argument."

Verb
  1. 1
    To repair flaws in an argument before analyzing it critically; to refute or to weaken the force of a stronger version of an argument than what was actually given.

    "I don't agree with the argument, because of 4. If I were to steelman it, which I may try but after work or maybe during lunch, I would first try to make it impervious to this assault:"

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname.

Synonyms

All synonyms
steelmakersteelworkersteelworker

Example

More examples

"a "steel man" is an improvement of someone's position or argument that is harder to defeat than their originally stated position or argument."

Etymology

From steel + -man. For the second definition, coined as the inverse of straw man.

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