Definition of "sophism" [soph•ism]

• A plausible but fallacious argument. (noun)
• Deceptive or fallacious argumentation. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "A sophism is taken as a specious argument used for deceiving someone."
• "Lurking behind the Euro-sophism is an uneasy sense that, if there were open primaries on this side of the A tlantic, voters might start demanding all sorts of unreasonable things — might, in other words, start behaving like tea partiers."
• "There is a well known, so-called sophism of the ancients consisting in this, that Achilles could never catch up with a tortoise he was following, in spite of the fact that he traveled ten times as fast as the tortoise."