Word.ws English Dictionary

both-sides

both-sides verb: to engage in bothsidesism, to treat a policy debate or controversy as a conflict between two equally valid (or equally dangerous, etc) viewpoints.

Verb

both-sides (third-person singular simple present both-sideses, present participle both-sidesing, simple past and past participle both-sidesed)

  1. (derogatory) To engage in bothsidesism, to treat a policy debate or controversy as a conflict between two equally valid (or equally dangerous, etc) viewpoints.
    • "McConnell badly needs the media's both-sidesing instincts to hold firm against the brute facts of the situation."2019, Deember 30, Greg Sargent, "Explosive New Revelations Just Weakened Trump's Impeachment Defense", The Washington Post Plum Line blog.
    • "Once she'd adequately both-sidesed Congress and Tump, she fell back to more comfortable Republican talking points […] "2020, February 4, "Lisa Murkowski Sick of All the Corruption, Will Vote to Let It Continue", Wonkette.

Forms of both-sides

third-person singular presentboth-sideses
present participleboth-sidesing
past participleboth-sidesed
pastboth-sidesed

Questions about both-sides

What does both-sides mean?
Both-sides means to engage in bothsidesism, to treat a policy debate or controversy as a conflict between two equally valid (or equally dangerous, etc) viewpoints.
What part of speech is both-sides?
Both-sides is a verb.
What is the past tense of both-sides?
The past tense of both-sides is both-sidesed.

Words near both-sides in the dictionary

  1. both-handedness
  2. both-sided
  3. both-sidedness
  4. both-sideism
  5. both-siderism
  6. both-sides
  7. both-sidesed
  8. both-sideses
  9. both-sidesing
  10. both-sidesism
  11. both-sidism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: both-sides (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “both-sides.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/both-sides. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.