Meaning & use
straw man
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Meanings
nouncountablefigurative
A false or exaggerated version of someone's argument, made up so that it is easy to attack and defeat.
Grammar: Countable: build a straw man, a straw man argument. Also written strawman.
Patterns
- build a straw man
- attack a straw man
Instead of answering my actual point, he built a straw man and knocked it down.
Critics said the report relied on a straw man to dismiss the proposal.
It is a classic straw man to claim that wanting regulation means wanting to ban everything.
nouncountable
A figure made of straw, such as a scarecrow or a dummy.
Grammar: The literal sense; the plural is straw men.
Patterns
- a straw man in the field
The farmer put a straw man in the field to scare the crows.
Children burned a straw man at the festival.
Word forms
| plural | straw men |
|---|
Common combinations
- build a straw man
- Don't build a straw man out of my opinion.
- attack a straw man
- The debater spent his time attacking a straw man.
- straw man argument
- That is a straw man argument, because nobody said that.
- knock down a straw man
- It is easy to knock down a straw man.
- set up a straw man
- She set up a straw man to make her rivals look unreasonable.
Synonyms and how they differ
- red herring
- A red herring distracts from the real issue with something irrelevant, while a straw man misrepresents the opponent's actual position.
- caricature
- Caricature is an exaggerated picture of a person or view, but it need not be used to win an argument.
- scarecrow
- Scarecrow is the literal figure in a field and rarely describes a flawed argument.
Opposites
Word family
- straw noun
- dried stalks of grain
- strawman noun
- a variant spelling of straw man
- strawmanning noun
- the habit of arguing against a distorted version of a view
Commonly confused: straw man or red herring?
straw man vs red herring
A red herring changes the subject; a straw man misstates the other person's argument and attacks that version.
Practice
Maya says schools should add more recess. Ben replies, You want children to stop learning math. What has Ben done?
Choose one answer.
Ben distorted Maya's view into something she never said and attacked that. A compromise or exact quote would stay true to her point.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “straw man”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.