Word.ws English Dictionary

violinist argument

violinist argument proper noun: an argument in favour of a right to abortion that appeals to a thought experiment in which a person with a rare blood type is kidnapped and plugged into a famous unconscious violinist with a fatal kidney ailment; if the violinist is unplugged, he will die, but if he stays plugged into the kidnappee for nine months, he will recover from his ailment. The argument assumes that in this hypothetical scenario, the kidnappee has the right to unplug themselves from the violinist at any time even if this will cause his death, because the violinist does not have a right to the kidnappee’s body.

Proper noun

the violinist argument

  1. An argument in favour of a right to abortion that appeals to a thought experiment in which a person with a rare blood type is kidnapped and plugged into a famous unconscious violinist with a fatal kidney ailment; if the violinist is unplugged, he will die, but if he stays plugged into the kidnappee for nine months, he will recover from his ailment. The argument assumes that in this hypothetical scenario, the kidnappee has the right to unplug themselves from the violinist at any time even if this will cause his death, because the violinist does not have a right to the kidnappee’s body.

Synonyms of violinist argument

Origin of violinist argument

The argument was first used in the essay “A Defense of Abortion” by Judith Jarvis Thomson, first published in the Philosophy & Public Affairs journal in 1971.

Questions about violinist argument

What does violinist argument mean?
Violinist argument means an argument in favour of a right to abortion that appeals to a thought experiment in which a person with a rare blood type is kidnapped and plugged into a famous unconscious violinist with a fatal kidney ailment; if the violinist is unplugged, he will die, but if he stays plugged into the kidnappee for nine months, he will recover from his ailment. The argument assumes that in this hypothetical scenario, the kidnappee has the right to unplug themselves from the violinist at any time even if this will cause his death, because the violinist does not have a right to the kidnappee’s body.
What part of speech is violinist argument?
Violinist argument is a proper noun.

Words near violinist argument in the dictionary

  1. violing
  2. violinic
  3. violining
  4. violinist
  5. violinist analogy
  6. violinist argument
  7. violinistic
  8. violinistically
  9. violinists
  10. violinlike
  11. violinmaker

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: violinist argument (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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