Idiom idiom
pancakes and waffles
Meaning
A response which misrepresents an opponent's argument, i.e., a straw man.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“You are talking about pancakes and waffles instead of my actual point.”
“I argued for better public transport, but he attacked a position I never held, which was just pancakes and waffles.”
“By misrepresenting the core of the debate with a series of pancakes and waffles, the speaker avoided addressing the difficult questions posed by the committee.”
Origin
first recorded 21st c.
first recorded 21st c.
The term was extrapolated from a 2017 post on the social media platform Twitter by the user Coolee Bravo (@bravocoolee). It is formed by analogy with the idiom apples and oranges.
Anchors to
Last updated August 10, 2026