contextomy
English
Etymology
context + -tomy
Noun
contextomy (countable and uncountable, plural contextomies)
- The act or practice of quoting somebody out of context, often to give a false impression of what they said.
- 1964, Milton Mayer, What can a man do?: A selection of his most challenging writings, page 33:
- …saying that the Literary Gazette had committed the Chicago Tribune's habitual crime of contextomy against me.
- 1967, Paul F. Boller, Quotemanship: the use and abuse of quotations for polemical and other purposes, page 286:
- The competent quoteman, no matter how eager he is to outwit his opponent, will have neither the need nor the inclination to stoop to contextomy of the flagrantly mendacious sort.
- 2008 May 29, Amol Rajan, “Excellent! Theatres forced to withdraw misleading reviews”, in The Independent:
- The prosecution would have to prove that audiences were misled by the practice, known as contextomy. Those who break the laws could face fines […]
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Derived terms
- contextomize