fallacious

UK/fəˈleɪ.ʃəs/US/fəˈleɪ.ʃəs/

adjectiveC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #15,036 of 15,258leans written

Fallacious means resting on faulty reasoning. A fallacious argument.

It is about the reasoning rather than the conclusion, so a fallacious argument can reach a true answer. Every named fallacy is a way of being fallacious that people fall into repeatedly.

Definitions of fallacious

1adjectivefallaciousResting on faulty reasoning.C2
“The whole case was fallacious and nobody in the room noticed.”

fallacious is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin fallacia comes from fallax, deceptive, from fallere, to deceive.

Latin
fallācia
Old French
fallacieux
English, today
fallacious

From Old French fallacieux (whence -acious), from Latin fallācia, from fallāx, from fallere.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

fallacious in the wild

When this outcome is actually unlikely (the argument is fallacious), it has also been called the domino fallacy.
Domino effect
Only when some of these presuppositions are not necessarily agreed to by the person who is asked the question does the argument containing them become fallacious.
Loaded question
Arguments containing informal fallacies may be formally valid, but still fallacious.
Fallacy
Complex questions can but do not have to be fallacious, as in being an informal fallacy.
Complex question
A fallacious argument may nevertheless have a true conclusion; the defect lies in the inadequate reasoning offered in support of it.
List of fallacies

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

the fallācia family

fallacy

fallacious — used about once every 159,543 pages · #15,036 · point at the bar for the others

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