Word of the Day

: March 6, 2024

ad hominem

adjective ad-HAH-muh-num

What It Means

Something described as ad hominem involves an attack on an opponent’s character rather than an answer to assertions or points that the opponent has made.

// The debate between the mayoral candidates was going smoothly until the ad hominem attacks began.

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ad hominem in Context

“Ad hominem arguments are viewed, almost universally, as bad, bad, bad.... Students are taught to differentiate between their opponent and their opponent’s argument. The rationale for doing so makes perfect sense. In theory, a person’s merits are irrelevant to whether their argument makes logical sense. An argument depends on nothing more than whether its conclusion follows its premises; the speaker, you might say, is just the messenger.” — Mehdi Hasan, Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking, 2023

Did You Know?

Ad hominem literally means “to the person” in New Latin (Latin as used since the end of the medieval period). In centuries past, the term was used in the phrase “argument ad hominem” (or argumentum ad hominem, to use the full New Latin phrase) to refer to a method of persuasion in which one introduces issues that relate personally to one’s opponent, such as the opponent’s habits, practices, or circumstances, instead of just sticking to principles or facts. What exactly came into play in such persuasions eventually expanded, and ad hominem came to describe an attack aimed at an opponent’s character rather than their ideas. The hostile nature of such attacks has led to an understanding of the term as meaning “against the person,” rather than its original Latin meaning of “to the person.”