"steelman" meaning in English

See steelman in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: steelmen [plural], steel-man [alternative]
Etymology: From steel + -man. For the second definition, coined as the inverse of straw man. Etymology templates: {{suf|en|steel|-man}} steel + -man Head templates: {{en-noun|steelmen}} steelman (plural steelmen)
  1. A masculine steelworker. Hypernyms: steelworker, steeler, millworker, worker, person
    Sense id: en-steelman-en-noun-en:masculine_subset_of_Q137964886 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Entries with translation boxes, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Terms with Spanish translations Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 39 24 36 Disambiguation of Entries with translation boxes: 49 14 37 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 46 13 41 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 44 18 38 Disambiguation of Terms with Spanish translations: 37 27 36
  2. A stronger version of an argument that one is about to critically analyze.
    Sense id: en-steelman-en-noun-haMknojR Categories (other): Quote-newsgroup with non-Usenet group, English entries with incorrect language header, English terms suffixed with -man, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Terms with Spanish translations Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 39 24 36 Disambiguation of English terms suffixed with -man: 27 41 32 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 46 13 41 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 44 18 38 Disambiguation of Terms with Spanish translations: 37 27 36
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Related terms: Man of Steel, Stalin, steeler, Steelers, Steelman, steely

Verb

Forms: steelmans [present, singular, third-person], steelmanning [participle, present], steelmanned [participle, past], steelmanned [past], steel-man [alternative]
Etymology: From steel + -man. For the second definition, coined as the inverse of straw man. Etymology templates: {{suf|en|steel|-man}} steel + -man Head templates: {{en-verb|++}} steelman (third-person singular simple present steelmans, present participle steelmanning, simple past and past participle steelmanned)
  1. To repair flaws in an argument before analyzing it critically; to refute or to weaken the force of a stronger version of an argument than what was actually given. Related terms: principle of charity Coordinate_terms: sanewash Translations (Translations): aplicar un hombre de acero (Spanish)
    Sense id: en-steelman-en-verb-DkchL2QD Categories (other): Quote-newsgroup with non-Usenet group, English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Terms with Spanish translations Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 39 24 36 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 46 13 41 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 44 18 38 Disambiguation of Terms with Spanish translations: 37 27 36

Inflected forms

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      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "Steelers"
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          "ref": "2011 October 24, Luke Muehlhauser, “Better Disagreement”, in LessWrong:",
          "text": "a \"steel man\" is an improvement of someone's position or argument that is harder to defeat than their originally stated position or argument.",
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          "ref": "2012 July 7, Guy Srinivasan, “Wireheading Steelman”, in lw-seattle (Usenet):",
          "text": "I want to make that strawman into a steelman, but I eliminated \"the pursuit of happiness\" from my to-do list so many years ago that I don't even know where I'd begin.",
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          "ref": "2015 February 11, Daniel Armak, “Re: volunteers for feb 24.”, in LessWrong Tel Aviv (Usenet):",
          "text": "It is possible that while preparing for the talk I will manage to convince myself that the problem is in fact resolved or dissolved. In that case I will treat you to my best steelmanning of the problem, and its resolution.",
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          "ref": "2015 June 18, rndn, “Going Deeper into Neural Networks”, in Hacker News forums:",
          "text": "Perhaps the argument should be steelmanned in that we should generally avoid using algorithms which are so complex that they aren't glass boxes.",
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          "ref": "2017 June 26, Conor Friedersdorf, “The Highest Form of Disagreement”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 30 Jun 2017:",
          "text": "And America would benefit if our culture of argument elevated the opposite approach, steel-manning, “the art of addressing the best form of the other person’s argument, even if it’s not the one they presented.” […] Coming full circle to our NPR host’s project, Messinger argues that “steelmanning makes you a better person.",
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          "code": "es",
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          "word": "aplicar un hombre de acero"
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              85,
              98
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              296
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          "text": "And America would benefit if our culture of argument elevated the opposite approach, steel-manning, “the art of addressing the best form of the other person’s argument, even if it’s not the one they presented.” […] Coming full circle to our NPR host’s project, Messinger argues that “steelmanning makes you a better person.",
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      "sense": "Translations",
      "word": "aplicar un hombre de acero"
    }
  ],
  "word": "steelman"
}

Download raw JSONL data for steelman meaning in English (5.5kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-02-08 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-02-01 using wiktextract (f492ef9 and 9905b1f). 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.