Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 September 26

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September 26

False canard

Suppose somebody is arguing against a particular plan, and they raise a problem with it, but deceptively. The person is opposed to the plan for a different, less persuasive reason, and they secretly don't believe the stated problem to be as serious as they make it seem. They are putting obstacles in the path. Can that spurious problem be called a canard? Looking it up on Wiktionary, I see it defined only as a hoax story. By habit, I not only want to say "that's a canard" in these situations, but "that's a false canard". This doesn't seem to be an actual phrase in use anywhere! I also have it in my head that canard means "flag", which it doesn't (it means "duck"). Can you untangle my malapropism? Is there a proper phrase for this concept that sounds at all similar? (It's not "false flag", nor is it "petard", which confusingly goes along with the word "hoist", like hoisting a flag, but is actually a firecracker and "hoist" there means to blow up, and anyway there's no "false petard" - is there?)  Card Zero  (talk) 21:49, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Red herring is somewhat close (?) "Your stated reason for objecting the plan is a red herring -- you actually appose it because..." --2603:6081:1C00:1187:DD45:E1CD:EA6A:4AD0 (talk) 03:03, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

On the Wikipedia "Antisemitic canard" article, the functional definition of the article topic is basically false narratives which -- no matter how often they are factually debunked -- get revived again and again and again and again, long past the time when the Energizer bunny's batteries have run down. Not sure if that's in any dictionary. -- AnonMoos (talk) 05:22, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Pauk Krugman calls these "zombie ideas" or, for short, "zombies".^[1]  --Lambiam 22:44, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Anyway, one term for what you describe is "hidden agenda", but there's nothing relevant on the Hidden agenda disambiguation page... AnonMoos (talk) 05:26, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Isn't "false canard" a redundancy? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:09, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

A false canard would be ... the truth? Clarityfiend (talk) 11:15, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Or at least a fake fake. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:19, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Face it. You can't handle a false canard! Clarityfiend (talk) 01:50, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Per the dictionary, a canard is "An unfounded rumour or story". As such, I think calling something a "false canard" is either redundant, or means something that looks like a canard but isn't. I'm also not sure that what is described in the original example actually is a canard. Iapetus (talk) 09:11, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

If it walks like a canard and quacks like a canard, it is a true canard.  --Lambiam 10:13, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

I'd call it a "fake objection" or "false objection".  --Lambiam 10:45, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you all, especially User:AnonMoos for the retrospectively obvious phrase "false narrative", which is what I should be saying if I want to be understood (always puts you at an advantage, when arguing, if you're understood). My feeling is that this is a very 21st century phrase, and prior to its arrival I had probably been trying to stretch canard to fit, except it's too grand a word to apply to mundane casual half-truths. I guess ad hoc justification is another way of expressing roughly the same concept.  Card Zero  (talk) 18:28, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

BTW: "A petard is a small bomb used for blowing up gates and walls when breaching fortifications", see Hoist with his own petard. Alansplodge (talk) 22:39, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Quite recently, Jeff Bezos was hoist with his own petard.  --Lambiam 12:02, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

In Newspapers.com (pay site), I'm seeing the expression "false canard" as far back as the 1870s. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:55, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Ooh. So I'm not making it up, I'm just a bit archaic. Good to know. :) I'd be interested to see an example of context.  Card Zero  (talk) 14:37, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

There is a type of mathematical curve called a "false carnard" which is unintelligible to me but appears in Singular Perturbations: Introduction to System Order Reduction Methods (p. 145). Alansplodge (talk) 18:02, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

As for the misleading premise definition, a couple of recent examples are;

Blaming climate change is a false canard that excuses the incompetence of elected officials...

Energy Made Easy: Helping Citizens Become Energy-Literate (2019)

Let us not focus on the microgeneration of electricity; we believe that this is a very false canard.

House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs (2007-2008)

Alansplodge (talk) 18:25, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

How marvellous. Apparently a canard explosion has been encountered in many applications ranging from chemistry to neuronal dynamics, aerospace engineering and ecology.  Card Zero  (talk) 19:29, 29 September 2021 (UTC)