Strawman

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Alternative spelling of straw man. alt-of, alternative
  2. 2
    an effigy in the shape of a man to frighten birds away from seeds wordnet
  3. 3
    a weak or sham argument set up to be easily refuted wordnet
  4. 4
    a male person used as a cover for some questionable activity wordnet
Verb
  1. 1
    Alternative spelling of straw man. alt-of, alternative

    "We are also charged with strawmanning Type la. This is 'boomerang misrepresentation' - a disingenuous tactic deployed by writers in an effort to establish the superiority of their own work when all they are really doing is simply repeating"

Synonyms

All synonyms
bird-scarerfront manfront manscarecrowscarecrowscarer

Example

More examples

"The antagonist is simultaneously a strawman for everything the author hates and the most likeable character by several orders of magnitude."

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