Sorry to contribute to a diversion, but that’s not how I’ve understood the phrase (and to add argument-from-authority to the mix, I did grad studies in philosop

Sorry to contribute to a diversion, but that’s not how I’ve understood the phrase (and to add argument-from-authority to the mix, I did grad studies in philosophy). I understand a strawman to be an argument presented by the author in a particularly weak way, so as to be easy to attack. The origin is straw figures set up by medieval soldiers to attack while training... they never fight back. The argument doesn’t need to be put into your counterpart’s mouth to be a strawman, just artificially weak.