reductio ad Hitlerum

noun

An attempt to invalidate someone else's argument on the basis that the same idea was promoted or practiced by Adolf Hitler or the Nazi Party.

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Meanings

nounreductio ad Hitlerum (plural reductio ad Hitlerums)

plural reductio ad Hitlerums

  1. An attempt to invalidate someone else's argument on the basis that the same idea was promoted or practiced by Adolf Hitler or the Nazi Party.

    Just on Twitter alone, there were too many arguments, too many reductio ad Hitlerums for me to handle alone.

    2018, Carl Miller, chapter 7, in The Death of the Gods […] , William Heinemann, →ISBN

Origin

Pseudo-Latinism. Coined by Leo Strauss in 1951, by analogy with reductio ad absurdum.

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Cite this entry
APA

reductio ad Hitlerum. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/reductio%20ad%20Hitlerum

MLA

“reductio ad Hitlerum.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/reductio%20ad%20Hitlerum. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “reductio ad Hitlerum,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/reductio%20ad%20Hitlerum.

Source: reductio ad Hitlerum on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.