tu quoque

plural tu quoques

1. attributiveoftenAn argument whereby an accusation or insult is turned back on the accuser; same to you

   The idealising side of Furman's construction exposes itself to the tu quoque retorts with which Putin and his aides now relish silencing criticism by the West.

   2007, Perry Anderson, “Russia's Managed Democracy”, in London Review of Books, number 29:2, page 10

   4 more examples

   And then they meet us with miserable tu quoques—tu quoques, gentlemen, which are the meanest form of logic, and, in my opinion, the most contemptible development of statesmanship.

   1890, National Liberal Federation. Proceedings in Connection with the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Federation Held in Sheffield, on Thursday & Friday, November 20th & 21st, 1890. With the Annual Report, and the Speeches Delivered by the Right Hon. Sir W. Harcourt, M.P. and the Right Hon. John Morley, M.P., page 104

   In the long run, the facile tu quoque arguments, such as those offered by Massu on the Alleg case, can only lead to an endless escalation of horror and degradation.

   1977, Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, New York: Review Books, published 2006, page 205

   Not all tu quoques, of course, are countercritical. For example the anti–logical-positivist and antirelativist tu quoques encountered in Chapter Three purport to discover a “reflexive weakness” in the positive arguments of their opponents such that when such arguments are turned back on themselves the result is an absurdity.

   1989, Malcolm Ashmore, The Reflexive Thesis: Wrighting Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, The University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 171

   Tu quoques shift the attention away from the weakness of one’s own argument. Political platforms are rife with tu quoques: each political party accuses the other of some atrocity or oversight wihout responding to any of the charges laid against them.

   2005, Robert Malcolm Murray, Nebojsa Kujundzic, Critical Reflection: A Textbook for Critical Thinking, McGill-Queen’s University Press, →ISBN, page 418

2. obsoleteslangThe vulva or vagina.

   I presented the mouth of the bottle in a slanting direction toward her. In an instant, she with her fingers contracted the lips of her tu quoque so as to produce a narrow curved stream, so correctly aimed that at least one-third actually entered the bottle.

   1808–10, William Hickey, Memoirs of a Georgian Rake, Folio Society 1995, p. 309