Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
Defining a word with the word being defined is a circular definition and is a logical fallacy.It's not a logical fallacy if no argument is made.
But your argument does nothing to demonstrate
that your personal definition is superior to the
dictionary's.
Circular definition - Wikipedia
Fallacies of definition - WikipediaA circular definition is one that uses the term(s) being defined as a part of the definition or assumes a prior understanding of the term being defined. There are several kinds of circular definition, and several ways of characterising the term: pragmatic, lexicographic and linguistic.
Circular definitions may be unhelpful if the audience must either already know the meaning of the key term, or if the term to be defined is used in the definition itself.
Other problems with a dictionary are with things like evolution or communism. Attaching evolution to Darwin isn't really accurate as the idea of evolution was around long before Darwin and his grandfather tutored and educated Darwin on the subject. Likewise communism was around way before Marx and it was a communist group who hired him and Engels to write the communist manifesto. But dictionaries will often make these mistakes.If one concept is defined by another, and the other is defined by the first, this is known as a circular definition, akin to circular reasoning: neither offers enlightenment about what one wanted to know.[7] "It is a fallacy because by using a synonym in the definiens the reader is told nothing significantly new."[5]
A straightforward example would be to define "Jew" as "a person believing in Judaism", and "Judaism" as "the religion of the Jewish people", which would make "Judaism" "the religion of the people believing in Judaism."
Lets take a look at everyone's favorite online example, Nazis. Nazis is generally and typically defined as a member of the National Socialists party in Germany under Adolf Hitler.
But that doesn't say who they were. An encyclopedia does just that. Just a couple paragraphs will generally give you that "view" that lets you know they were fascists, racists, and radically Right WingNa·zi
/ˈnätsē/
noun
noun: Nazi; plural noun: Nazis
historical
a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.
A dictionary is generally ok to use, but sometimes it is not the best or most optimal choice.Nazism (/ˈnɑːtsiɪzəm, ˈnæt-/ NA(H)T-see-iz-əm),[1] officially National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus [natsjoˈnaːlzotsjaˌlɪsmʊs]), is the ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP, or National Socialist German Workers' Party in English) in Nazi Germany. During Hitler's rise to power in 1930s Europe, it was frequently referred to as Hitlerism. The later related term "Neo-Nazism" is applied to other far-right groups with similar ideas which formed after the collapse of the Nazi regime.
Nazism is a form of fascism,[2][3][4][5] with disdain for liberal democracy and the parliamentary system. It incorporates fervent antisemitism, anti-communism, scientific racism, and the use of eugenics into its creed. Its extreme nationalism originated in pan-Germanism and the ethno-nationalist Völkisch movement which had been a prominent aspect of German nationalism since the late 19th century, and it was strongly influenced by the Freikorps paramilitary groups that emerged after Germany's defeat in World War I, from which came the party's underlying "cult of violence".[6] Nazism subscribed to pseudo-scientific theories of a racial hierarchy[7] and social Darwinism, identifying the Germans as a part of what the Nazis regarded as an Aryan or Nordic master race.[8] It aimed to overcome social divisions and create a homogeneous German society based on racial purity which represented a people's community (Volksgemeinschaft). The Nazis aimed to unite all Germans living in historically German territory, as well as gain additional lands for German expansion under the doctrine of Lebensraum and exclude those who they deemed either Community Aliens or "inferior" races.