Word.ws English Dictionary

scissor statement

scissor statement noun: a polarising and incendiary topic, opinion or phrase.

Noun

scissor statement (plural scissor statements)

  1. (Internet) A polarising and incendiary topic, opinion or phrase.
    • The Ground Zero mosque was a scissor statement that divided Americans.
    • Brexit, by its nature, was a perfect scissor statement for almost everyone in the UK: the population was split into ‘Leavers’ and ‘Remainers’, and mutual outrage at the beliefs and actions of the other side became commonplace, as did personal abuse.2021, Charles Arthur, Social Warming: How Social Media Polarises Us All, →ISBN

Examples of scissor statement in a sentence

  • I'm not sure there's been any recent news event that's as much of a Scissor Statement as the homeless subway death.2023 May 5, @JeremiahDJohns, Twitter, archived from the original on 15 Jun 2024:
  • The world avoids falling into perpetual low-grade warfare only because she accidentally creates a scissor statement that tears apart the company before its work is finished.2023 July 30, Helen Lewis, “The Weird, Fragmented World of Social Media After Twitter”, in The Atlantic:

Forms of scissor statement

pluralscissor statements

Origin of scissor statement

Coined by American psychiatrist and blogger Scott Alexander Siskind (writing as "Scott Alexander") in his 2018 short story “Sort By Controversial”, where he wrote: “In some dead language, scissor shares a root with schism. A scissor is a schism-er, a schism-creator.”

Questions about scissor statement

What does scissor statement mean?
Scissor statement means a polarising and incendiary topic, opinion or phrase.
How do you use scissor statement in a sentence?
I'm not sure there's been any recent news event that's as much of a Scissor Statement as the homeless subway death.
What part of speech is scissor statement?
Scissor statement is a noun.
What is the plural of scissor statement?
The plural of scissor statement is scissor statements.

Words near scissor statement in the dictionary

  1. scissor kicks
  2. scissor lift
  3. scissor lifts
  4. scissor sister
  5. scissor sisters
  6. scissor statement
  7. scissor statements
  8. scissor switch
  9. scissor switches
  10. scissor tackle
  11. scissor tackles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scissor statement (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-scissor statement.wav.

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