Incomplete Comparison
A fallacy where something is declared "better" or "faster" without specifying compared to what. Without a baseline, the claim is meaningless.
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Origin
The fallacy has roots in Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations (c. 350 BCE), the first systematic catalogue of logical errors. Modern attention to the pattern intensified through advertising criticism; linguists observed that comparative adjectives without a "than" clause violate Paul Grice's 1975 maxim of quantity — the cooperative expectation that speakers provide sufficient information. The label "incomplete comparison" became standard in informal logic textbooks during the 1970s and 1980s.
Updated February 22, 2026