straw man
B2CEFR level
50/100Rarity: uncommon
TechnicalRegister
General phrase
A misrepresented or oversimplified version of an opponent's position, set up to be easily refuted.
He attacked a straw man, pretending the treaty demanded open borders when it proposed nothing of the kind.
Business noun
A rough draft proposal put forward mainly to draw out objections and sharpen the real terms.
I'll circulate a straw-man term sheet on Monday so we can react to something concrete rather than argue in the abstract.
Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.
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