# Argumentum ad nauseam

*Also called: Argument from repetition*

- **Cluster:** Crowds and prestige — Numbers, custom and status standing in for reasons
- **Page:** https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/ad-nauseam/
- **In Arabic:** https://fallacy.wiki/ar/fallacy/ad-nauseam.md
- **Licence:** CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

## What it is

Treating repetition as if it were support, so a claim gains credibility by being said often.

## In the wild

> It has been said so often it must be true.

## How to answer it

Count the arguments, not the mentions. Ask what new evidence each repetition added.

## Origin and naming

Latin for 'argument to the point of nausea' — the claim is pushed until listeners are too tired of it to push back. Psychologists gave the underlying effect a name in 1977, when Hasher, Goldstein, and Toppino showed that repeated statements are rated truer purely because they were repeated.

## More places it shows up

- A headline claims the economy is collapsing; the same claim, reworded, fills half your feed for a week, and by Friday it feels like common knowledge.
- In every sprint retro the same engineer repeats that the codebase is unsalvageable, and over months the team starts treating a rewrite as settled without ever reading an audit.
- An ad runs the same 'nine out of ten' line for years, and people eventually quote it as a statistic without ever asking nine out of ten whom.
- A family elder says at every gathering that the eldest grandchild is the difficult one, and the cousins begin introductions with apologies for her before she speaks.

## How to spot it

- Notice when the speaker's case is mostly the claim itself, restated in new clothes, rather than reasons.
- Notice when you can no longer recall first disbelieving the claim — familiarity has quietly replaced argument.
- Count how many times the point has been made versus how many times it has been supported; a large gap is the tell.

## Nearby

- [Argumentum ad populum](https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/ad-populum.md)
- [Gish gallop](https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/gish-gallop.md)

## Read more

- [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_nauseam)
- [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect)

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From fallacy.wiki — a bilingual field guide to 91 logical fallacies, published by phi holdings. Licensed CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/): reuse freely with attribution to fallacy.wiki.