Word.ws English Dictionary

guilt by association

guilt by association noun: a fallacy where a person or idea is judged guilty or discredited solely due to their connection to someone or something that is viewed negatively, rather than based on their own merits or actions.

Noun

guilt by association (uncountable)

  1. A fallacy where a person or idea is judged guilty or discredited solely due to their connection to someone or something that is viewed negatively, rather than based on their own merits or actions.

Questions about guilt by association

What does guilt by association mean?
Guilt by association means a fallacy where a person or idea is judged guilty or discredited solely due to their connection to someone or something that is viewed negatively, rather than based on their own merits or actions.
What part of speech is guilt by association?
Guilt by association is a noun.

Words near guilt by association in the dictionary

  1. Guills
  2. Guilmette
  3. Guilmettes
  4. Guilon
  5. guilt
  6. guilt by association
  7. guilt complex
  8. guilt complexes
  9. guilt lane
  10. guilt lanes
  11. guilt offering

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: guilt by association (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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Cite this entry: “guilt by association.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/guilt_by_association. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.