Semantic shift
The fallacy of equivocation is often used with words that have a strong emotional content and many meanings. These meanings often coincide within proper context, but the fallacious arguer commits a semantic shift, slowly changing the context by treating, as equivalent, distinct meanings of the term.
The following sentence is a well-known equivocation:
"Do women need to worry about man-eating sharks?", in which "man-eating" is construed to mean a shark that devours only male human beings.
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
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