Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The practice of using decontextualized quotations from a document (often, but not always, a book of the Bible) to establish a proposition rhetorically through an appeal to authority.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • As the truism states "a text without a context is a pretext for a prooftext."

    Rev. Margaret Aymer, Ph. D.: On Minas, Occupations And Tony Perkins Rev. Margaret Aymer 2011

  • As the truism states "a text without a context is a pretext for a prooftext."

    Rev. Margaret Aymer, Ph. D.: On Minas, Occupations And Tony Perkins Rev. Margaret Aymer 2011

  • Maude's willingness to accept Angelica's interpretation of this verse again signals her inability to read properly--this time, because she fails to realize that Angelica's prooftext doesn't hold up when restored to its original context.

    Books 2009

  • Maude's willingness to accept Angelica's interpretation of this verse again signals her inability to read properly--this time, because she fails to realize that Angelica's prooftext doesn't hold up when restored to its original context.

    Academic 2009

  • Maude's willingness to accept Angelica's interpretation of this verse again signals her inability to read properly--this time, because she fails to realize that Angelica's prooftext doesn't hold up when restored to its original context.

    Maude; Or, the Anglican Sister of Mercy 2009

  • Maude's willingness to accept Angelica's interpretation of this verse again signals her inability to read properly--this time, because she fails to realize that Angelica's prooftext doesn't hold up when restored to its original context.

    The Little Professor: 2009

  • The prooftext frequently cited for this unilateral ruling was Genesis 35: 11, where Jacob is commanded in the second person masculine singular to “Be fertile and increase.”

    Infertile Wife in Rabbinic Judaism. 2009

  • Maude's willingness to accept Angelica's interpretation of this verse again signals her inability to read properly--this time, because she fails to realize that Angelica's prooftext doesn't hold up when restored to its original context.

    Religion 2009

  • The prooftext had been written nearly three generations earlier by Langston Hughes: One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, ‘I want to be a poet—not a Negro poet,’ meaning, I believe, ‘I want to write like a white poet.’

    Archive 2008-11-01 2008

  • The prooftext had been written nearly three generations earlier by Langston Hughes: One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, ‘I want to be a poet—not a Negro poet,’ meaning, I believe, ‘I want to write like a white poet.’

    Literature without prefixes 2008

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