Word.ws English Dictionary

whataboutist

whataboutist adjective: of or pertaining to whataboutism.

Adjective

whataboutist (comparative more whataboutist, superlative most whataboutist)

  1. Of or pertaining to whataboutism.
    • Similarly, in response to being told off for the state of her room, one child’s whataboutist reply will be to say: “But what about my brother’s room? His is worse.”2022 May 20, Benjamin Curtis, “Whataboutism: what it is and why it’s such a popular tactic in arguments”, in The Conversation

Noun

whataboutist (plural whataboutists)

  1. One who uses whataboutism.
    • But for the charge to really stick they have three options, none of which whataboutists usually take the trouble to perform: condemn both Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump for meeting with dictators, praise both Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump, or show how the cases are in some significant way different so that Mr....2018 July 19, Ben Yagoda, “One Cheer for Whataboutism”, in The New York Times

Forms of whataboutist

Adjective
comparativemore whataboutist
superlativemost whataboutist
Noun
pluralwhataboutists

Origin of whataboutist

From what about + -ist, see whataboutism.

Questions about whataboutist

What does whataboutist mean?
Whataboutist means of or pertaining to whataboutism.
What part of speech is whataboutist?
Whataboutist can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near whataboutist in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whataboutist (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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