Kettle Logic
Using multiple contradictory arguments to defend the same position, none of which are consistent with each other. Named after Freud's story of the borrowed kettle.
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Origin
Sigmund Freud told the joke in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900): a man accused of returning a borrowed kettle with a hole in it replies that (1) he returned it undamaged, (2) it already had a hole when he borrowed it, and (3) he never borrowed it at all. Jacques Derrida later formalized the pattern as "kettle logic" (la logique du chaudron) in his 1972 essay "Plato's Pharmacy," using it to expose contradictory reasoning in philosophical texts.
Updated February 22, 2026