sophism

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English sophim, from Old French soffime, sofime, sofisme, sophisme, from Latin sophisma (“fallacy, sophism”), from Ancient Greek σόφῐσμᾰ (sóphisma), from σοφίζω (sophízō) + -μα (-ma).

Noun

sophism (countable and uncountable, plural sophisms)

1. (uncountable, historical) The school of the sophists in antiquity; their beliefs and method of teaching philosophy and rhetoric.

   Synonym: sophistic

   • 1958, Sophie Trenkner, The Greek Novella in the Classical Period, page 15:

     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.

   • 2003, Murray Leaf, “Ethnography and Pragmatism”, in Alfonso Morales, editor, Renascent Pragmatism: Studies in Law and Social Science, →ISBN, page 92:

     Empiricism has its roots in Greek and Roman sophism and skepticism, and continues through Kant and American pragmatism.

   • 2009, Richard M. Berthold, Dare to Struggle: The History and Society of Greece, →ISBN, page 75:

     Sophistic teachers did not, in general, consciously aim at corrupting the young or turning them against their parents, but the radical skepticism and moral relativism of later sophism indirectly achieved something like this.

2. (countable) A flawed argument, superficially correct in its reasoning, usually designed to deceive.

   Synonym: sophistry

   • 1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XIX, in Romance and Reality. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 232:

     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.

3. (countable) An intentional fallacy.
4. (uncountable) Sophistic, fallacious reasoning or argumentation.

   Synonym: sophistry

   • 1779, David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion:

     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?

   • 30 Oct 1980, H. Dieter Zeh, letter to John Archibald Wheeler.

     I expect that the Copenhagen interpretation will some time be called the greatest sophism in the history of science, but I would consider it a terrible injustice if—when some day a solution should be found—some people claim that ‘this is of course what Bohr always meant’, only because he was sufficiently vague.

Related terms

• sophist
• sophistic
• sophisticate
• sophisticated
• sophistry

Translations

method of teaching

• Finnish: sofistiikka
• Sicilian: sufìstica f

flawed argument superficially correct in its reasoning, usually designed to deceive

• Arabic: سَفْسَطَة f (safsaṭa), مُغَالَطَة (ar) f (muḡālaṭa).
• Armenian: սոփեստաբանություն (hy) (sopʻestabanutʻyun)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 詭辯／诡辩 (zh) (guǐbiàn)

• Czech: sofisma n
• Dutch: sofisme (nl) n, drogreden (nl) f or m
• French: sophisme (fr) m
• German: Sophismus (de) m
• Greek: σόφισμα (el) n (sófisma), σοφιστεία (el) f (sofisteía)

  Ancient: σόφισμα n (sóphisma)

• Italian: sofisma (it) m
• Japanese: 詭弁 (ja) (きべん, kiben)
• Macedonian: софизам m (sofizam)
• Malayalam: കുതർക്കം (ml) (kutaṟkkaṁ), കള്ളന്യായം (kaḷḷanyāyaṁ)
• Polish: sofizmat m, sofizm (pl) m (historical)
• Portuguese: sofisma (pt) m
• Russian: софи́зм (ru) m (sofízm)
• Sicilian: fìsima m or f
• Spanish: sofisma (es) m
• Ukrainian: софі́зм m (sofízm)

See also

• half-truth

Etymology 2

Noun

sophism (uncountable)

1. Archaic spelling of Sufism.

Further reading

• “sophism”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “sophism”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “sophism”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.
• “sophism”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• “sophism”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
• “sophism”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
• Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “sophism”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
• sophism, britannica.com