in the spirit of the Board's longstanding atmosphere of philopolemica, i offer a few of my favorite words describing arguments, arguers, and the like:
prolepsis - rendering an argument ineffective by anticipating and disarming it hi, W'ON
trichoschisticism - hair-splitting; arguing overly fine points
logicaster - a person pedantic in argument; a person whose logic is less valid than he thinks
choplogic - absurdly convoluted, sophistical, or illogical argumentation; glib and specious reasoning
and this last one, which i think may be a legal term (Sparteye?? can you elaborate?)
ex silentio - from silence: basing an argument on the lack or absence of evidence, data, firm proof, etc.
i'm not sure i understand the last ~ does this mean that the aggressor in the argument bases his/her argument on the fact that his/her opponent hasn't offered some sort of empirical proof?
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anyone care to add to the list? rhetorical terms are of course welcome =)
NOTE: all liability is specifically released by this poster; should anyone choose to use any of these terms while engaged in real life argumentation, specifically with one's spouse, they shall do so at their own risk.
