Rejoinder
A considered reply to a remark or argument — longer and more reasoned than a retort.
A rejoinder is a reply, usually in conversation or in print, that answers a previous statement with argument rather than with wit. The word comes from Old French 'rejoindre', 'to answer to a charge', and kept a legal flavour in English: in older common-law pleading, the rejoinder was the defendant's response to the plaintiff's replication, several turns into the paper exchange.
In ordinary use a rejoinder is longer and cooler than a retort or a riposte. It concedes what has to be conceded, isolates the point of disagreement, and answers it on the merits. A well-made rejoinder often reads as the moment a debate stopped being an exchange of positions and became an exchange of reasons.
The form is native to the letters pages of serious magazines, to academic reply-and-response pairings, and to the appended notes in scholarly editions. It rewards writers who can quote their opponent fairly — a rejoinder that misstates the position it is answering is not a rejoinder but a straw man dressed in one.
Common mistake: treating a rejoinder as the last word. The form invites further reply; a writer who tries to close the exchange by rhetorical volume usually loses the reader who was there for the argument.
“It is not enough to say that my critic has misread me; I owe the reader an account of what I did in fact say, and why the misreading was possible.”
Keep reading the glossary
A quick, pointed reply that turns the previous speaker's words back on them.
A quick, sharp reply that turns an opponent's remark back on them.
A rhetorical figure in which the speaker asks a question and immediately answers it.
Anticipating an objection in your own argument and answering it before it can be raised.