polemical

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English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From polemic +‎ -al.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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polemical (comparative more polemical, superlative most polemical)

  1. Related to argument or controversy; containing polemic, being polemic.
    1. Being an attempt to evaluate the arguments comprehensively.
      • 1996, Igor Diakonoff, Leonid Kogan, “Addenda et Corrigenda to Hamito-Semitic Etymological Dictionary by V. Orel and O. Stolbova”, in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, volume 146, page 25:
        […] in order to give a comprehensive critical and polemical analysis of the Dictionary in question, a whole book would be needed.
      • 1999, Gilbert Durand, The Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary, page 154:
        Bachelard has given a clear analysis of the "Atlas complex", a polemical complex and schema of verticalising effort or elevation, accompanied by a feeling of monarchical contemplation which diminishes the world so as better to glorify the gigantic, and the ambition inherent in ascensional reveries.
    2. (somewhat derogatory) Prone to causing disputes; inclined to causing the expression of opposing opinions, disputatious, contentious, edgy.
      • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVII, in Francesca Carrara. [], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, [], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 190:
        And though the annals of the period do not show us that there was less ale drawn, or less canary called for; men got dry with the heat of polemical discussion, and drunk with a text, not the fag end of a ballad, in their mouths; and people made a sort of morality of straight hair, long faces, and sad-coloured garments.
      • 2012, Craig L. Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables, →ISBN, page 48:
        Not only are all these allegations worded in an unnecessarily polemical style, they are also simply false
      • 2013, Johannes Zachhuber, Theology as Science in Nineteenth-Century Germany, →ISBN, page 57:
        Remarkable here is the rather polemical choice of words []
      • 2021, Carson Holloway, Dobbs and Democratic Legitimacy, in: Law and Liberty, December 21 2021
        If democratic legitimacy is a principle—and not just a polemical weapon wielded by the left in a selective and self-serving way—then we would have to consider not only the democratic legitimacy of a potential reversal of Roe but also the democratic legitimacy (if any) of the constitutional right to abortion itself.

Translations

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Noun

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polemical (plural polemicals)

  1. A diatribe or polemic.

Further reading

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