Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A man of learning; a teacher; specifically, a professional teacher of philosophy; a sophist.
- n. A sophist; a quibbler; a subtle and fallacious reasoner.
- n. In English universities, a student advanced beyond the first year of his residence, now generally called a soph. At Cambridge during the first year the students have the title of freshmen, or first-year men; during the second, second-year men, or junior sophs or sophisters; and during the third year, third-year men, or senior sophs or sophisters. In the older American colleges the junior and senior classes were originally called
junior sophisters and senior sophisters. The terms were similarly applied to students in their third and fourth years in Dublin University. Comparesophomore . - To maintain by a fallacious argument or sophistry.
Wiktionary
- n. a sophist
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. obsolete A sophist. See sophist.
- n. (Eng. Univ.) A student who is advanced beyond the first year of his residence.
- v. obsolete To maintain by sophistry, or by a fallacious argument.
Examples
“In the third year of his residence the student of the liberal arts was allowed to become a "sophister," and to take part in logical disputations.”
“I remember when you were a boy you wished to make your fine new whip a present to old Aunt Peggy, merely because she admired it; and now, with like unreflecting and inappropriate liberality, you would resign your beloved to a smoke-dried young sophister, who cares not one of the hairs which it is his occupation to split, for all the daughters of Eve.”
“Julian the Apostate was so taken with an oration of Libanius, the sophister, that, as he confesseth, he could not be quiet till he had read it all out.”
“There the Latinist and sophister and every unlearned writer tries the fitness of his pen, a practice that we have frequently seen injuring the usefulness and value of the most beautiful books.”
“And I built in Urbs in Rure, for minne elskede, my shiny brows, under astrolobe from my upservatory, an erd-closet with showne ejector wherewithin to be squatquit in most covenience from her sabbath needs, when open noise should stilled be: did not I festfix with mortarboard my unniversiries, wholly rational and gottalike, sophister agen sorefister, life sizars all?”
“When Philip had ended, I hindered the sophister from returning an answer to the discourse, and said: Let us rather inquire,”
“And Gorgias the sophister, when a swallow muted upon him, looked upon her and said,”
“For if, in writing against Antidorus or Bion the sophister, he had made mention of laws, policy, order, and justice, might not either of them have said to him, as Electra did to her mad brother”
“A sophister I will forbid to sit by a sophister, and one poet by another;”
“Others professed to be indignant that the Athenians, who formerly had come to Sicily with a great fleet and a numerous land-army, and perished miserably without being able to take the city of Syracuse, should now, by means of one sophister, overturn the sovereignty of”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘sophister’.
-
College Reading Words
words i find in my reading at college
empirical, caprice, telos, insofar, bedeviled, nihilism, confound, nomenclature, negate, hegemony, ebb, homophily and 35 more...
-
ragnvaeig's Words
incarnadine, percolation, simulacrum, promethean, enchiridion, lugubriousness, adamantine, verisimilitude, cumulonimbus, silvern, sophister, hex and 50 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for sophister.
whichbe One who makes use of fallacious arguments; a specious reasoner. A sophist. May 13, 2008