"man of straw" meaning in English

See man of straw in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: men of straw [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|men of straw}} man of straw (plural men of straw)
  1. A weak person.
    Sense id: en-man_of_straw-en-noun-IkfKZqk1
  2. One who is financially irresponsible.
    Sense id: en-man_of_straw-en-noun-otnTTxlj Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 6 37 17 41
  3. A person put in the front of some business, but who is not really responsible. Synonyms: dummy
    Sense id: en-man_of_straw-en-noun-dTKhCQkq Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 6 37 17 41
  4. A tactic used in debates and arguments where a weaker thesis is substituted for the opponent's real proposition, this thesis then being refuted, thereby creating the illusion of winning the argument against the original proposition.
    Sense id: en-man_of_straw-en-noun-7kSmzLio Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 6 37 17 41
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: straw man

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for man of straw meaning in English (1.8kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "men of straw",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "men of straw"
      },
      "expansion": "man of straw (plural men of straw)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "When push came to shove he gave in almost immediately, showing that he was a man of straw after all."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A weak person."
      ],
      "id": "en-man_of_straw-en-noun-IkfKZqk1",
      "links": [
        [
          "weak",
          "weak"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "6 37 17 41",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "One who is financially irresponsible."
      ],
      "id": "en-man_of_straw-en-noun-otnTTxlj"
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "6 37 17 41",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Coordinate term: front man"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A person put in the front of some business, but who is not really responsible."
      ],
      "id": "en-man_of_straw-en-noun-dTKhCQkq",
      "links": [
        [
          "business",
          "business"
        ],
        [
          "responsible",
          "responsible"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "dummy"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "6 37 17 41",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A tactic used in debates and arguments where a weaker thesis is substituted for the opponent's real proposition, this thesis then being refuted, thereby creating the illusion of winning the argument against the original proposition."
      ],
      "id": "en-man_of_straw-en-noun-7kSmzLio"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0 0 0",
      "word": "straw man"
    }
  ],
  "word": "man of straw"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English countable nouns",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English nouns"
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "men of straw",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "men of straw"
      },
      "expansion": "man of straw (plural men of straw)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "When push came to shove he gave in almost immediately, showing that he was a man of straw after all."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A weak person."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "weak",
          "weak"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "glosses": [
        "One who is financially irresponsible."
      ]
    },
    {
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Coordinate term: front man"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A person put in the front of some business, but who is not really responsible."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "business",
          "business"
        ],
        [
          "responsible",
          "responsible"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "dummy"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "glosses": [
        "A tactic used in debates and arguments where a weaker thesis is substituted for the opponent's real proposition, this thesis then being refuted, thereby creating the illusion of winning the argument against the original proposition."
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "straw man"
    }
  ],
  "word": "man of straw"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.