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''sophistry'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260904152658-00-⌔

sophistry - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

sophistry (countable and uncountable, plural sophistries)

  • (uncountable, historical) The actions or arguments of a sophist.
    • ✤ Such conduct is at any rate not sophistical, if Aristotle be right in describing sophistry as the art of making money.1
  • (uncountable) Plausible yet fallacious argumentation or reasoning.
    • ✤ And so, my head hitting have to be real, solid, and true, with no sophistry or fantasy about them.2
  • (countable) An argument that seems plausible, but is fallacious or misleading, especially one devised deliberately to be so.
    • ✤ And so he reasoned until the first generous impulse to proclaim the truth and relinquish his titles and his estates to their rightful owner was forgotten beneath the mass of sophistries which self-interest had advanced.3

Etymology

From Middle English safistre, soffistre, sofystry, sophestrie, sophestry, sophestrye, sophistre, sophistri, sophistrie, sophistry, sophistrye, sophystrye, from Old French sofisterie, sophistrie and Medieval Latin sophistria, Anglo- Latin sophestria, from Latin sophista, from Ancient Greek σοφιστής (sophistḗs, “wise man”), from σοφίζω (sophízō, “to be wise”), from σοφός (sophós, “wise”), equivalent to sophist +‎ -ry.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈsɒ.fɪ.stɹi/
  • (US) IPA: /ˈsɑ.fɪ.stɹi/
  • Audio (US): 🔊

Printed 2026-09-04.

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Footnotes

  1. 1844, Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments: ↩

  2. Part 1 published in 1605, Part 2 in 1615, translated in 2003, Miguel de Cervantes and translated by Edith Grossman, Don Quixote, page 197: ↩

  3. 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 99: ↩

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