Definitions for sophists

• Definition
• Anagrams (165)

sophists soph·ist

Spelling: [sof-ist]

IPA: /ˈsɒf ɪst/

Sophists is a 8 letter English word. It's valid Scrabble word worth 13 points. It's valid Words with friends word worth 13 points.

You can make 165 anagrams from letters in sophists (hiopssst).

Definitions for sophists

noun

1. (often initial capital letter) Greek History. any of a class of professional teachers in ancient Greece who gave instruction in various fields, as in general culture, rhetoric, politics, or disputation. a person belonging to this class at a later period who, while professing to teach skill in reasoning, concerned himself with ingenuity and specious effectiveness rather than soundness of argument.
2. a person who reasons adroitly and speciously rather than soundly.
3. a philosopher.

Origin of sophists

1535-45; Latin sophista Greek sophistḗs sage, derivative of sophízesthai

Examples for sophists

He is asked 'whether Meno shall go to the sophists and be taught.'

With the sophists of Louvain, as Luther terms them, he could have had no sympathy.

The Athenian youth were not corrupted in this sense, and therefore the sophists could not have corrupted them.

Yet incidentally the antagonism between Socrates and the sophists is allowed to appear.

Never have we set eyes on the man anywhere who owed his goodness to the sophists of to-day.

The sophists are still floundering about the distinction of the real and seeming.

Let the moralists battle it out with the sophists: it did her a world of good.

Are not the public who say these things the greatest of all sophists?

All this is easy enough; the noble breed of heroes are a tribe of sophists and rhetors.

What principle of rival sophists or anybody else can overcome in such an unequal contest?