sophist
IPA: sʌfˈɪst
noun
- One of a class of teachers of rhetoric, philosophy, and politics in ancient Greece.
- (figuratively) A teacher who uses plausible but fallacious reasoning.
- (figuratively, by extension) One who is captious, fallacious, or deceptive in argument.
- (dated) Alternative form of sophister (“university student who has completed at least one year”) [A sophist.]
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Examples of "sophist" in Sentences
- There's a reason why you were called a sophist seneca...
- Perhaps the vain sophist would have been incapable of producing such sentiments.]
- The surging music and tremendous themes of the poet, the sweet persuasion of the sophist were a wonder and delight.
- Originally the sophist was a lover of truth; then he became a lover of words that concealed truth, and the chief end of his existence was to balance a feather on his nose and keep three balls in the air for the astonishment and admiration of the bystanders.
- All those mercenary adventurers who, as we know, are called sophist by the multitude, and regarded as rivals, really teach nothing but the opinions of the majority to which expression is given when large masses are collected, and dignify them with the title of wisdom.
- 29 But they disdained the language and the sciences of the Greeks; and the vain sophist, or grave philosopher, who had enjoyed the flattering applause of the schools, was mortified to find that his robust servant was a captive of more value and importance than himself.
- My advice then is to mistrust the sonorous catch-words394 of the sophist, and not to despise the reasoned conclusions395 of the philosopher; for the sophist is a hunter after the rich and young, the philosopher is the common friend of all; he neither honours nor despises the fortunes of men.
- My advice then is to mistrust the sonorous catch-words (13) of the sophist, and not to despise the reasoned conclusions (14) of the philosopher; for the sophist is a hunter after the rich and young, the philosopher is the common friend of all; he neither honours nor despises the fortunes of men.
- Socrates pursues the same vein of thought in the Protagoras, where he argues against the so-called sophist that pleasure and pain are the final standards and motives of good and evil, and that the salvation of human life depends upon a right estimate of pleasures greater or less when seen near and at a distance.
- They were born into the misty morning twilight of the medieval renaissance, of an age when intellectual curiosity was awakening, when philosophy, the sciences and Latin literature were studied with a lively but uncritical enthusiasm, when the rhetorician and the sophist were the uncrowned kings of intelligent society.
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