Word.ws English Dictionary

Bulverism

Bulverism noun: a rhetorical fallacy in which a speaker assumes that their opponent's argument is wrong, and instead of disproving it, condescendingly explains why their opponent would have come to that conclusion.

Noun

Bulverism (uncountable)

  1. A rhetorical fallacy in which a speaker assumes that their opponent's argument is wrong, and instead of disproving it, condescendingly explains why their opponent would have come to that conclusion.
    • [Y]ou must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I...[1944, C[live] S[taples] Lewis, “'Bulverism': or, the Foundation of 20th Century Thought”, in Walter Hooper, editor, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, Grand Rapids, M.I.: William B....

Origin of Bulverism

Coined by British writer, lay theologian, and scholar C. S. Lewis in 1941.

Questions about Bulverism

What does Bulverism mean?
Bulverism means a rhetorical fallacy in which a speaker assumes that their opponent's argument is wrong, and instead of disproving it, condescendingly explains why their opponent would have come to that conclusion.
What part of speech is Bulverism?
Bulverism is a noun.

Words near Bulverism in the dictionary

  1. Bulusan
  2. Bulusu
  3. Bulusus
  4. bulvan
  5. Bulverhythe
  6. Bulverism
  7. Bulverist
  8. Bulverists
  9. Bulverize
  10. Bulverized
  11. Bulverizes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Bulverism (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.

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