Word.ws English Dictionary

no true Scotsman fallacy

no true Scotsman fallacy noun: an informal fallacy in which one attempts to defend or protect an a posteriori claim from a falsifying counterexample by covertly modifying the initial claim, especially transforming it into a tautology by saying that any counterexamples are ipso facto not valid members of the class being described.

Noun

no true Scotsman fallacy (plural no true Scotsman fallacies)

  1. An informal fallacy in which one attempts to defend or protect an a posteriori claim from a falsifying counterexample by covertly modifying the initial claim, especially transforming it into a tautology by saying that any counterexamples are ipso facto not valid members of the class being described.

Forms of no true Scotsman fallacy

pluralno true Scotsman fallacies

Origin of no true Scotsman fallacy

Attributed to the English philosopher Antony Flew, from his 1966 book God & Philosophy: :In this ungracious move a brash generalization, such as No Scotsmen put sugar on their porridge, when faced with falsifying facts, is transformed while you wait into an impotent tautology: if ostensible Scotsmen put sugar on their porridge, then this is by itself sufficient to prove them not true Scotsmen.

Questions about no true Scotsman fallacy

What does no true Scotsman fallacy mean?
No true Scotsman fallacy means an informal fallacy in which one attempts to defend or protect an a posteriori claim from a falsifying counterexample by covertly modifying the initial claim, especially transforming it into a tautology by saying that any counterexamples are ipso facto not valid members of the class being described.
What part of speech is no true Scotsman fallacy?
No true Scotsman fallacy is a noun.
What is the plural of no true Scotsman fallacy?
The plural of no true Scotsman fallacy is no true Scotsman fallacies.

Words near no true Scotsman fallacy in the dictionary

  1. no time
  2. no time like the present
  3. no time to lose
  4. no trespassing
  5. no true Scotsman fallacies
  6. no true Scotsman fallacy
  7. no trump
  8. no trumps
  9. no two ways about it
  10. no use
  11. no wave

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: no true Scotsman fallacy (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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