Suppressed Correlative
Fallacy of Lost Contrast · Suppressed Relative
The fallacy of redefining a correlative so that one alternative is made impossible (all things are either "X" or "Y").
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Origin
Alexander Bain, the Scottish philosopher and inaugural Regius Professor of Logic at the University of Aberdeen, identified and named the fallacy in his 1868 essay "Mystery, and Other Violations of Relativity" in The Fortnightly Review, later collected in Practical Essays (1884). Bain classified it as a "fallacy of relativity" — the error of redefining one member of an opposing pair (such as knowledge/ignorance or silence/speech) so broadly that the other member ceases to describe any real situation.
Updated February 22, 2026