tu quoque
/tuːˈkwoʊkwiː/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
rare/tuːˈkwoʊk/
tu quoque noun: an argument whereby an accusation or insult is turned back on the accuser; same to you.
Noun
tu quoque (plural tu quoques)
- An argument whereby an accusation or insult is turned back on the accuser; same to you
- And then they meet us with miserable tu quoques—tu quoques, gentlemen, which are the meanest form of logic, and, in my opinion, the most contemptible development of statesmanship.1890, National Liberal Federation. Proceedings in Connection with the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Federation Held in Sheffield, on Thursday & Friday, November 20th & 21st, 1890. With the Annual...
- In the long run, the facile tu quoque arguments, such as those offered by Massu on the Alleg case, can only lead to an endless escalation of horror and degradation.1977, Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, New York: Review Books, published 2006, page 205
- The vulva or vagina.
- I presented the mouth of the bottle in a slanting direction toward her. In an instant, she with her fingers contracted the lips of her tu quoque so as to produce a narrow curved stream, so correctly aimed that at least one-third actually entered the bottle.1808–10, William Hickey, Memoirs of a Georgian Rake, Folio Society 1995, p. 309
Examples of tu quoque in a sentence
- Not all tu quoques, of course, are countercritical.1989, Malcolm Ashmore, The Reflexive Thesis: Wrighting Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, The University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 171:
- Tu quoques shift the attention away from the weakness of one’s own argument.2005, Robert Malcolm Murray, Nebojsa Kujundzic, Critical Reflection: A Textbook for Critical Thinking, McGill-Queen’s University Press...
- The idealising side of Furman's construction exposes itself to the tu quoque retorts with which Putin and his aides now relish silencing criticism by the West.2007, Perry Anderson, “Russia's Managed Democracy”, in London Review of Books, number 29:2, page 10:
Forms of tu quoque
| plural | tu quoques |
|---|
Origin of tu quoque
From Latin tu (“you”) quoque (“also”).
Questions about tu quoque
- What does tu quoque mean?
- Tu quoque means an argument whereby an accusation or insult is turned back on the accuser; same to you.
- How do you use tu quoque in a sentence?
- Not all tu quoques, of course, are countercritical.
- What part of speech is tu quoque?
- Tu quoque is a noun.
- How do you pronounce tu quoque?
- Tu quoque is pronounced /tuːˈkwoʊkwiː/.
- What is the plural of tu quoque?
- The plural of tu quoque is tu quoques.
Words near tu quoque in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tu quoque (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: “tu quoque.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tu_quoque. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.