sophistry

plural sophistries

1. historicaluncountableThe actions or arguments of a sophist.

   Such conduct is at any rate not sophistical, if Aristotle be right in describing sophistry as the art of making money.

   1844, Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments

2. uncountablePlausible yet fallacious argumentation or reasoning.

   And so, my head hitting have to be real, solid, and true, with no sophistry or fantasy about them.

   Part 1 published in 1605, Part 2 in 1615, translated in 2003, Miguel de Cervantes and translated by Edith Grossman, Don Quixote, page 197

   Synonyms: excuse, sophism, casuistry, casuistics, pilpul, pilpulism, Jesuitry, Jesuitism

3. countableAn argument that seems plausible, but is fallacious or misleading, especially one devised deliberately to be so.

   And so he reasoned until the first generous impulse to proclaim the truth and relinquish his titles and his estates to their rightful owner was forgotten beneath the mass of sophistries which self-interest had advanced.

   1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 99