handwaving

handwaving
hand waving n.
Usually insubstantial words or actions intended to convince or impress:

resorted to hand waving instead of arguing rationally.

* * *


Universalium. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем решить контрольную работу

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Handwaving — The term handwaving is an informal term that describes either the debate technique of failing to rigorously address an argument in an attempt to bypass the argument altogether, or a deliberate gesture and admission that one is intentionally… …   Wikipedia

  • Mathematical jargon — The language of mathematics has a vast vocabulary of specialist and technical terms. It also has a certain amount of jargon: commonly used phrases which are part of the culture of mathematics, rather than of the subject. Jargon often appears in… …   Wikipedia

  • Wikipedia:Glossary — Welcome to Wikipedia, which anyone can edit. Help index: Ask questions · Learn wikicode · View FAQ · Read Glossary · Live Wikipedia editing related help via web chat  …   Wikipedia

  • Unobtainium — is a humorous term that refers to any extremely rare, costly, or physically impossible material needed to fulfill a given design for a given application. The name is a blend derived from + ium (the suffix for a number of elements). Variations… …   Wikipedia

  • Born-Oppenheimer approximation — In quantum chemistry, the computation of the energy and wavefunction of an average size molecule is a formidable task that is alleviated by the Born Oppenheimer (BO) approximation. For instance the benzene molecule consists of 12 nuclei and 42… …   Wikipedia

  • Plaintext — This article is about cryptography. For the computing term meaning the storage of textual material that is (largely) unformatted, see plain text. In cryptography, plaintext is information a sender wishes to transmit to a receiver. Cleartext is… …   Wikipedia

  • Fisking — The term Fisking, or to Fisk, is blogosphere slang describing detailed point by point criticism that highlights perceived errors, disputes the analysis of presented facts, or highlights other problems in a statement, article, or essay. [William… …   Wikipedia

  • Quantum decoherence — Quantum mechanics Uncertainty principle …   Wikipedia

  • Schwinger model — In physics, the Schwinger model, named after Julian Schwinger, is the model describing 2D Euclidean quantum electrodynamics with a Dirac fermion. This model exhibits a spontaneous symmetry breaking of the U(1) symmetry due to a chiral condensate… …   Wikipedia

  • Functional derivative — In mathematics and theoretical physics, the functional derivative is a generalization of the directional derivative. The difference is that the latter differentiates in the direction of a vector, while the former differentiates in the direction… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”