a "steel man" is an improvement of someone's position or argument that is harder to defeat than their originally stated position or argument.
Source: wiktionary
Steelman
Synonyms for "steelman" (3 found)
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Closest matches (1)
Strong matches (1)
Related words (1)
Noun(1 words)
Related word relations
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
More general
8 entriesSynonyms
1 entriesRelated terms
8 entriescoordinate
1 entriesderived from
1 entriesrelated to
6 entriesTranslations
1 translations across 1 languages.
Spanish
1 entries- aplicar un hombre de acero verb (Translations)
Sample sentences
6 total sentences available.
I want to make that strawman into a steelman, but I eliminated "the pursuit of happiness" from my to-do list so many years ago that I don't even know where I'd begin.
Source: wiktionary
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:
Source: wiktionary
It is possible that while preparing for the talk I will manage to convince myself that the problem is in fact resolved or dissolved. In that case I will treat you to my best steelmanning of the problem, and its resolution.
Source: wiktionary
Showing 4 of 6 available sentences.
Keep exploring
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.