Overton window

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English

Etymology

Named after Joseph P. Overton (1960–2003), former vice-president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Pronunciation

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Noun

Overton window (plural Overton windows)

  1. The range of ideas that the public will accept, i.e. those ideas that are not considered too extreme or radical.
    Synonym: window of discourse
    Near-synonym: opinion corridor
    • 2012, Ryan Holiday, Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, Penguin, →ISBN, page 258:
      Nor is he the only one of his kind—on all sides of the spectrum, there are individuals like Mike, shaping what we read, setting the Overton Window in our political debate, stirring things up and laughing (and profiting) as we freak out about it.
    • 2017, Elizabeth Manton, transl., “epilogue”, in Utopia for Realists, Kindle edition, Bloomsbury Publishing, translation of Gratis geld voor iedereen by Rutger Bregman, page 255:
      And yet, despite all this, a society can change completely in a few decades. The Overton window can shift. A classic strategy for achieving this is to proclaim ideas so shocking and subversive that anything less radical suddenly sounds sensible.
    • 2017, Angela Nagle, chapter 3, in Kill All Normies, Zero Books, →ISBN:
      Although the tactics of the online right are updated to a digital age, it is hard to think of a better term than Gramscian to describe what they have strategically achieved, as a movement almost entirely based on influencing culture and shifting the Overton window through media and culture, not just formal politics.
    • 2023 August 8, Janan Ganesh, “The oneness of Ron DeSantis and Rishi Sunak”, in Financial Times‎:
      Yet each man will seem at least house-trained compared with recent leaders of their party. “Rightwing, but not feral,” is quite the commendation now. A political scientist might say that the Overton window of acceptable ideas has widened. In plainer speech: voters are grateful for small mercies.
    • 2023 October 2, Courtney Young, “Calling It Now: Throuples Are About to Put Love Triangles Out of Business”, in Cosmopolitan‎:
      Mainstream culture is clearly fascinated by (and increasingly comfortable with) non-monogamy, and as a result, the Overton window of “provocative content” has shifted: What was once sexually explicit is today TV-MA, and classic romance is now, well, cringe.

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