Word.ws English Dictionary

steelmanning

steelmanning is the present participle and gerund of steelman.

Meaning of steelman

Verb

steelman (third-person singular simple present steelmans, present participle steelmanning, simple past and past participle steelmanned)

  1. 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)
    Antonyms:
    straw man

See all 4 meanings of steelman

Questions about steelmanning

What is steelmanning the present participle and gerund of?
Steelmanning is the present participle and gerund of steelman.

Words near steelmanning in the dictionary

  1. steelmaker
  2. steelmakers
  3. steelmaking
  4. steelman
  5. steelmanned
  6. steelmanning
  7. steelmans
  8. steelmaster
  9. steelmasters
  10. steelmen
  11. steelo

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: steelmanning (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.

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