steelman
steelman noun: a male steelworker.
Noun
steelman (plural steelmen)
- A male steelworker.
- A stronger version of an argument that one is about to critically analyze.
- a "steel man" is an improvement of someone's position or argument that is harder to defeat than their originally stated position or argument.2011 October 24, Luke Muehlhauser, “Better Disagreement”, in LessWrong
- I want to make that strawman into a steelman, but I eliminated "the pursuit of happiness" from my to-do list so many years ago that I don't even know where I'd begin.2012 July 7, Guy Srinivasan, “Wireheading Steelman”, in lw-seattle (Usenet)
- Antonyms:
- strawman
Verb
steelman (third-person singular simple present steelmans, present participle steelmanning, simple past and past participle steelmanned)
- To repair flaws in an argument before analyzing it critically; to refute or to weaken the force of a stronger version of an argument than what was actually given.
- I don't agree with the argument, because of 4. If I were to steelman it, which I may try but after work or maybe during lunch, I would first try to make it impervious to this assault:2012 July 7, Guy Srinivasan, “Wireheading Steelman”, in lw-seattle (Usenet)
- It is possible that while preparing for the talk I will manage to convince myself that the problem is in fact resolved or dissolved. In that case I will treat you to my best steelmanning of the problem, and its resolution.2015 February 11, Daniel Armak, “Re: volunteers for feb 24.”, in LessWrong Tel Aviv (Usenet)
- Antonyms:
- straw man
Proper noun capitalized: Steelman
Steelman (plural Steelmans)
- A surname.
Antonyms of steelman
Forms of steelman
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | steelmen |
| alternative form | steel-man |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | steelmans |
| present participle | steelmanning |
| past participle | steelmanned |
| past | steelmanned |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Steelmans |
Origin of steelman
From steel + -man. For the second definition, coined as the inverse of straw man.
Questions about steelman
- What does steelman mean?
- Steelman means a male steelworker.
- What part of speech is steelman?
- Steelman can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- What is the plural of steelman?
- The plural of steelman is steelmen.
Words near steelman in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: steelman (page history and authors); Steelman (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “steelman.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/steelman. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.