Word.ws English Dictionary

Bulverize

Bulverize verb: to subject (an opponent) in a debate) to Bulverism ("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").

Verb

Bulverize (third-person singular simple present Bulverizes, present participle Bulverizing, simple past and past participle Bulverized)

  1. (transitive) To subject (an opponent) in a debate) to Bulverism ("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").
    • We might recall here Roger Scruton's commendation of taking "a negotiating posture towards the other'—to do that, I think, is to cease to see a person as "the other" but rather as "my neighbor." And when you do that, it becomes harder to Bulverize that person, to treat him or her as so obviously...2017, Alan Jacobs, How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds, New York, N.Y.: Currency, →ISBN, page 83

Forms of Bulverize

third-person singular presentBulverizes
present participleBulverizing
past participleBulverized
pastBulverized

Questions about Bulverize

What does Bulverize mean?
Bulverize means to subject (an opponent) in a debate) to Bulverism ("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 Bulverize?
Bulverize is a verb.
What is the past tense of Bulverize?
The past tense of Bulverize is Bulverized.

Words near Bulverize in the dictionary

  1. bulvan
  2. Bulverhythe
  3. Bulverism
  4. Bulverist
  5. Bulverists
  6. Bulverize
  7. Bulverized
  8. Bulverizes
  9. Bulverizing
  10. Bulwang
  11. bulward

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Bulverize (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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