Sophist

This article is about the intellectual phenomenon of the 5th century BC. For the movement of the 2nd and 3rd century AD, see Second Sophistic. For the work by Plato, see Sophist (dialogue).
"Sophism" redirects here. Not to be confused with Sufism or Sophiology.

A sophist (Greek: σοφιστής, romanized: sophistēs) was a teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics and mathematics. They taught arete, "virtue" or "excellence", predominantly to young statesmen and nobility.

The arts of the sophists were known as sophistry and gained a negative reputation as tools of arbitrary reasoning. "Sophistry" is today used as a pejorative for a superficially sound but intellectually dishonest argument in support of a foregone conclusion.