sophist

In ancient Greece, one of a group of 5th-century BC itinerant lecturers on culture, rhetoric, and politics. Sceptical about the possibility of achieving genuine knowledge, they applied bogus reasoning and were concerned with winning arguments rather than establishing the truth. Plato regarded them as dishonest and sophistry came to mean fallacious reasoning. In the 2nd century AD the term was linked to the art of public speaking.