The term straw man or man of straw can have many different meanings. Literal "straw men" (dummies made primarily of straw, or stuffed with straw) have seen both practical and literary uses. "Straw man" may also refer to the straw man fallacy, a rhetorical technique (also classified as a logical fallacy) based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position; deriving from the use of straw men in combat training. The term has still other meanings in fields such as decision making and law.

In logic and rhetoric
A straw-man argument is the practice of refuting a weaker argument than an opponent actually offers. To "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw-man argument" is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to your opponent. A straw-man argument can be a successful rhetorical technique (that is, it may succeed in persuading people) but it is also a logical fallacy, since the argument actually presented by your opponent has not been refuted, only a weaker argument.

One can set up a straw man in the following ways:
Present the opponent's argument in weakened form, refute it, and pretend that the original has been refuted. Present a misrepresentation of the opponent's position, refute it, and pretend that the opponent's actual position has been refuted. Present someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, refute that person's arguments, and pretend that every upholder of that position, and thus the position itself, has been defeated. Invent a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs that are criticized, and pretend that the person represents a group that the speaker is critical of.
Some logic textbooks define the straw-man fallacy only as a misrepresented argument. It is now common, however, to use the term to refer to all of these tactics. The straw-man technique is also used as a form of media manipulation.

An example of the Straw Man technique would be:
Debater A: "I don't think that children should play out in the busy streets."
Debater B: "I thildren should not be kept locked-up in their own homes as my opponent suggests."
However, carefully presenting and refuting a weakened form of an opponent's argument is not always itself a fallacy. Instead, it restricts the scope of the opponent's argument, either to where the argument is no nt of view that was created in order to be easily defeated in argument; the creator of a "straw man" argument does not accurately reflect the best arguments of his or her opponents, but instead sidesteps or mischaracterizes them so as to make the opposing view appear weak or ridie name 'straw man' comes from a physical analogy which highlights the fallacious nature of the a straw man argument. Imagine two men in a fight. The first person throws a punch at the second, the second person, in defence, builds a man from straw, starts throwing punches at it and later claims victory for winning the fight against the other person.

Decision making
A "straw-man proposal" is a simple draft proposal intended to generate discussion of its disadvantages and to provoke the generation of new and better proposals. As the document is revised, it may be given other edition names such as "stone-man", "iron-man", and so on, etc.

Straw man in law
The term straw man can refer to a third party that acts as a "front" in a transaction (i.e., who is an agent for another) for the purpose of taking title to real property, breaking a joint tenancy, or engaging in some other kind of transaction where the principal remains hidden or to do something else which is not allowed. A straw man is also "a person of no means," or one who deliberately accepts a liability or other monetary responsibility without the resources to fulfill it, usually to shield another party.

In literature
Straw men of both the literal and metaphorical kind have been employed in literature over the years. The fact that a straw man has the shape of a man, but has nothing but (symbolically) worthless straw inside, maning: Plot and/or ending details follow.In 1900, L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in which one of the main characters was the Scarecrow, depicted in the illustrations of the original edition and in the classic film version, The Wizard of Oz, as a man of straw, who joins Dorothy in the hopes that the Wizard of Oz will give him a brain. According to much-debated theories about allegorical meanings in the novel, the Scarecrow represents the American farmer of the time, both because of his straw (indicating his agrarian nature) and his perceived lack of intellect, which we find out by t Straw is one of two titles used to translate Heinrich Mann's novel Der Untertan (1918). It is the first book in his Das Kaiserreich trilogy and an unremitting critique of Wilhelmine Germany at the turn of the Twentieth Century. It portrays the life of a man, Diederich Hessling, a fanatic admirer of Empeeathertop: A Moralized Legend," by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a tale of a scarecrow (or man of straw) made lively by the crone Mother Rigby. He sets forth into the world cloaked by magic and makes a splash in society, behaves honorably, and falls in love. When his true nature is revealed to him, he feels ashamed, though his creator, Mother Rigby, wonders at the success of many men who are just as hollow and false as her strawman.

Literal straw men
A literal "straw man" is a dummy in the shape of a human created by stuffing straw into clothes. Straw men are used as scarecrows, combat training targets, swordsmiths' test targets, effigies to be burned, and as rodeo dummies to distract bulls.

Rodeo dummies
In the sport of rodeo, the straw man is a dummy made of a shirt and pants stuffed with straw, traditionally propped up with a broom. The straw man is placed in the arena during bullriding events as a safety measure. It is intended to distract the bull after the rider has dismounted (or has been thrown), with the idea that the bull will attack the straw man rather than attack its former rider. Two so-called rodeo clowns – people dressed in bright colors whose job it is to distract the bull if the rider is injured – are in the ring as well and are usually far more effective than the straw man.

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