Meanings
- derogatorynot comparableOf a supposedly scientific argument or explanation: unable to be meaningfully discussed because it is based on fundamentally invalid reasoning or speculative premises that cannot be proven or falsified.
Your alternate name for “near monopoles” (magnets with one pole appearing much stronger than the other) is bad labwork—labwork so mesmerizingly awful that it flat out is not even wrong.
1997, Electronics Now, volume 68, page 71 more example
Some physicists claim that the dominant research program, designed to overcome this situation, is not really science at all. As Peter Woit (2007) put it, it is not even wrong. If we ignore such critics of the state of physics and accept the mainstream view we are told that nature can only be understood through mathematics which now cannot be interpreted in non-mathematical language […]
2016, Arran Gare, The Philosophical Foundations of Ecological Civilization, page 3
Origin
Generally attributed to theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
not even wrong. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/not%20even%20wrong
“not even wrong.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/not%20even%20wrong. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “not even wrong,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/not%20even%20wrong.
Source: not even wrong on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.