Definition:
Rejecting an argument because of its insignificance, error, or wickedness. A type of refutation.
Etymology:
From the Greek, "refutation, counter-statement"Examples:
- "I have been mocked and censured as a scare-monger and even as a war-monger, by those whose complacency and inertia have brought us all nearer to war and war nearer to us all."
(Winston Churchill) - "TRUE!--nervous--very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses--not destroyed--not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?"
(Edgar Allan Poe, "The Tell-Tale Heart") - "In his remarkable apology for lynching, Bishop Haygood, of Georgia, says: ‘No race, not the most savage, tolerates the rape of woman, but it may be said without reflection upon any other people that the Southern people are now and always have been most sensitive concerning the honor of their women--their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters.’ It is not the purpose of this defense to say one word against the white women of the South. Such need not be said, but it is their misfortune that the chivalrous white men of that section, in order to escape the deserved execration of the civilized world, should shield themselves by their cowardly and infamously false excuse, and call into question that very honor about which their distinguished priestly apologist claims they are most sensitive. To justify their own barbarism they assume a chivalry which they do not possess. True chivalry respects all womanhood . . .. Virtue knows no color line, and the chivalry which depends upon complexion of skin and texture of hair can command no honest respect."
(Ida B. Wells-Barnett, A Red Record)
Pronunciation: an-ti-REE-sis
