fallacy (adjective: fallacious)
noun

- an idea that a lot of people think is true but is in fact false

Cambridge Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

Fallacy stems from the Latin fallacia (deception), from fallax (deceptive) and fallere (to deceive). The sense of false logic dates back to around the mid-1500s.

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BY THE WAY

Throughout history, philosophers, mathematicians, and linguists have identified many forms of fallacy, many with interesting names such as:

Strawman Argument, False Dilemma, Slippery Slope Fallacy, Red Herring Fallacy, Sunk Costs, Appeal to Pity, Bandwagon Fallacy,… and many more including the THE IF-BY-WHISKEY FALLACY:

The label if-by-whiskey refers to a 1952 speech by Noah S. “Soggy” Sweat, Jr., a young lawmaker from the U.S. state of Mississippi, on the subject of whether Mississippi should continue to prohibit (which it did until 1966) or finally legalize alcoholic beverages:

    My friends,...

    If when you say whiskey you mean the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.

   But, if when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman’s step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life’s great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.

    This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.

“Noah S. Sweat - Whiskey Speech”. Famous Speeches and Speech Topics.

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SYNONYMS

aberration, artifice, bias, casuistry, cavil, delusion, equivocation, erratum, erroneousness, error, fallaciousness, fairy tale, FALLACY, falsehood, flaw, illusion, inconsistency, invalidity, misapprehension, misbelief, miscalculation, misconstruction, misinterpretation, misreading, mistake, non sequitur, old wivesʼ tale, preconception, prejudice, solecism, sophism, sophistry, speciousness, twisting the facts, untruth, wrong end of the stick

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Practice OWAD in an English conversation, say something like:

“Although I respect his opinion, Jim’s argument was a FALLACY. I suggested he check his source of information.”

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Paul Smith