English edit

Etymology edit

pseudo- +‎ debate

Noun edit

pseudodebate (plural pseudodebates)

  1. Something presented as a debate in which there is no real disagreement.
    • 1996, Dennis Michael Patterson, Wayne A. Patterson, Law and Truth, page 129:
      In Constitutional Fate, Bobbitt argues that the controversy over the legitimacy of judicial review is a pseudodebate, driven largely by a false picture of the nature of argument in constitutional law.
    • 1998, Tom Athanasiou, Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor, page 80:
      Paul Ehrlich, again, is not innocent here, for the best example, and the most important, is the pseudodebate between Malthusian pessimists and anti-Malthusian optimists.
    • 2016, Steven Hatch, Snowball in a Blizzard:
      We have already seen one such noncontroversy in the form of the pseudodebate about Lyme disease.