I need a catchier title for this, but one of my favorite forms of content are when someone quotes an idiom in an attempt to discredit it, but in the process ends up proving the point of the idiom in the first place.

Many years ago at my old church, one of the pastors spent an entire sermon talking about how much he hated the St. Francis of Assisi quote: “Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words.” The idea, of course, is that our lives should always be preaching the Gospel by how we live, and when given the opportunity, we can talk about our faith.

Well, this pastor spent the whole sermon talking about how much he hated this because there are going to be times you need to speak up. Yes, of course. That is why there’s that part about using words when you need to. In preaching this sermon against this saying, you’ve said you’re trying to debunk it, but you just ended up proving it out.

Another recent example: I saw a clip on Instagram of a guy saying that he’s a contrarian to the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” but how we need to support families with kids because it’s hard to raise without a community.

Yes, that is what the saying means. You are not a contrarian, you just didn’t understand the phrase and ended up restating it, worse, and with more words.

I need a title for this phenomenon of quoting sayings to debunk them but you just end up explaining the original saying. There’s probably a logical fallacy with a fancy Latin title that someone should point me to.