Word.ws English Dictionary

whataboutisms

whataboutisms is the plural of whataboutism.

Meaning of whataboutism

Noun

whataboutism (countable and uncountable, plural whataboutisms)

  1. (rhetoric) A logical fallacy where criticisms are deflected by raising unrelated criticisms of the opposite side.
    • And I'd no time at all for 'What aboutism' - you know, people who said 'Yes, but what about what's been done to us? ... That had nothing to do with it, and if you got into it you were defending the indefensible.1994, Joe Austin, “The obdurate and the obstinate”, in Tony Parker, editors, May the Lord in His Mercy be Kind to Belfast, Henry Holt & Co, →ISBN, page 136

Questions about whataboutisms

What is whataboutisms the plural of?
Whataboutisms is the plural of whataboutism.

Words near whataboutisms in the dictionary

  1. what-you-may-call-its
  2. what-you-see-is-what-you-get
  3. whatabouteries
  4. whataboutery
  5. whataboutism
  6. whataboutisms
  7. whataboutist
  8. whataboutists
  9. whatabouts
  10. whatagwan
  11. whatcha

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whataboutisms (page history and authors); whataboutism (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: “whataboutisms.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whataboutisms. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.