411 REFERENCE · Wiktionary
Bulverize
Reference material by Wiktionary contributors. This retains its source identity and is not 411 news reporting.
English
Verb
en transitive To subject (an opponent) in a debate) to Bulverism ("a rhetorical fallacy in which a speaker assumes that their opponent's argument is wrong, and instead of disproving it, condescendingly explains why their opponent would have come to that conclusion").
en Alan Jacobs How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds New York, N.Y. Currency 2017 83 https://archive.org/details/howtothinksurviv0000jaco/page/83/mode/1up 978-0-451-49960-8 We might recall here Roger Scruton's commendation of taking "a negotiating posture towards the other'—to do that, I think, is to cease to see a person as "the other" but rather as "my neighbor." And when you do that, it becomes harder to Bulverize that person, to treat him or her as so obviously wrong that no debate is required, only mockery.