fallacy of illicit minor premise

The fallacy of the illicit minor premise occurs in formal logic when a syllogism distributes a term in the conclusion that was not distributed in the minor premise. A term is distributed when a proposition refers to all members of the class that the term denotes.12

In a syllogism, the minor premise is the one containing the minor term. For a syllogism to be valid, any term distributed in the conclusion must also be distributed in its respective premise. If the minor term is distributed in the conclusion but not in the minor premise, the argument commits the fallacy of the illicit minor premise. This is a formal fallacy because it relates to the structure of the argument rather than its content.321