What's the difference between contentious and polemic?

Contentious


Definition:

  • (a.) Fond of contention; given to angry debate; provoking dispute or contention; quarrelsome.
  • (a.) Relating to contention or strife; involving or characterized by contention.
  • (a.) Contested; litigated; litigious; having power to decide controversy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Republicans remain wary of a contentious debate on the divisive issue, which could anger their core voters and undercut potential electoral gains in the November elections when control of Congress will be at stake.
  • (2) How to administer the fund is another contentious area.
  • (3) They make a big deal when it happens, and then they forget.” The use of sarin has been highly contentious throughout the Syrian war.
  • (4) The election in the capital of the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation has been deeply contentious.
  • (5) I can only say, we want to do more in terms of research and we obviously want to support our scientists.” NCRIS is not specifically mentioned in the contentious higher education bill that the Senate will debate next week.
  • (6) I’ve never had a black person or a brown person ever say anything bad about me.” Then he proceeded to make fresh contentious comments, first by repeating the comparison between slavery and welfare dependence: “Receiving welfare and housing – is that a sense of slavery when you get caught up in that and can’t get out of it for generations?
  • (7) Garcia, who sought to interview all 22 executive committee members who made the contentious decision to award the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 tournament to Qatar but found some who are no longer in football beyond his reach, delivered his report this month.
  • (8) The Jedwabne massacre and Kaminski's line that "Jews should say sorry for killing Poles" during the second world war is by far the most important of the many contentious issues on this man.
  • (9) Samuel Wurzelbacher, who became famous during the 2008 election as “Joe the Plumber” after he had a heated discussion with Obama on the campaign trail, was championed by presidential nominee John McCain but later made contentious remarks such as a call to “put a damn fence on the border going to Mexico and start shooting”.
  • (10) Southern said on Tuesday it would reinstate travel passes for staff and allow them to swap shifts, reversing two contentious moves following strike action.
  • (11) Meanwhile, MPs in Athens approved the contentious reforms and austerity package demanded by its creditors amid angry scenes in parliament and violent clashes on the streets on Wednesday.
  • (12) Italy’s president, Giorgio Napolitano, has resigned, formally setting off what will be a contentious election to replace him.
  • (13) There is a growing conviction that medical technologies are major contributors to escalating costs, and regulating them is generally viewed as the least contentious way to control expenses in the 1980's.
  • (14) The contentious position is set to be waved into the final EU negotiating position by consensus.
  • (15) But this later proved contentious because the reserve appeared to preclude any resettlement of the atolls by islanders whose families had been evicted in 1965 to make way for a giant US air force base.
  • (16) The treasurer Joe Hockey has hinted the government might be prepared to shift ground on its insistence that a crucial $150m research funding extension hinges on the passage of contentious legislation to deregulate university fees.
  • (17) Business rates have long been a contentious issue among retailers, who argue the system penalises high street premises and unfairly benefits online retailers.
  • (18) Osborne also envisages “demonstrating the concept” of safe fracking by “focusing on a small number of sites in less contentious locations” including “public sector land (particularly MOD owned)”.
  • (19) Trump is an isolationist so the Chinese are going to see that as an opportunity to keep strengthening their position and their role in the region.” Delury said Trump was also likely to ditch the highly contentious Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which under Obama had been “a centrepiece of an American resurgence of its role in Asia”.
  • (20) Political distortion And in all of this, Brooks consistently injected a highly contentious political ideology into the arteries of public debate, a toxic cocktail of crude populism and intellectual confusion.

Polemic


Definition:

  • (a.) Of or pertaining to controversy; maintaining, or involving, controversy; controversial; disputative; as, a polemic discourse or essay; polemic theology.
  • (a.) Engaged in, or addicted to, polemics, or to controversy; disputations; as, a polemic writer.
  • (n.) One who writes in support of one opinion, doctrine, or system, in opposition to another; one skilled in polemics; a controversialist; a disputant.
  • (n.) A polemic argument or controversy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) My idea in Orientalism was to use humanistic critique to open up the fields of struggle, to introduce a longer sequence of thought and analysis to replace the short bursts of polemical, thought-stopping fury that so imprison us.
  • (2) Byatt said that, while she had not wished to present an allegory or a polemic, the story was impelled by a profound sense of gloom about the environment and indeed about all human endeavours.
  • (3) Anyone who allows himself to stoop to such polemics shows that they are running out of proper arguments”, said Jürgen Hardt, the foreign affairs spokesman for Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats.
  • (4) i lent brett ratner my 2nd (of 2) parms dorz cos he wantd 2 impress women and I was worrid he mite get bbq sauce on it agen lol You've said your films are intended as "polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator."
  • (5) As one of the disenchanted Labour voters described by MacAskill, I have had many polemics put my way: the most persuasive have been George Galloway's "Just Say Naw" and a speech on the implications of Scottish independence for business by Rupert Soames, CEO of the Scottish firm Aggreko.
  • (6) Moore had contributed an essay on women's anger to an anthology of polemical writing.
  • (7) As well as appearing on TV, she writes a weekly column in the Sunday Fairfax papers, a column on The Drum, and books ranging from a Quarterly Essay on Malcolm Turnbull to the popular culture polemic The Wife Drought.
  • (8) Hitting back at the harsh criticism he has received in recent days, including depictions of him in the Greek press as an IS terrorist who had beheaded Greece, he said: “I have such a thick skin that it can’t derail me, but what does torment me is distorting polemic that completely misses the point.” Soon afterwards Sahra Wagenknecht of the far-left Linke, accused him of being a “cutback Taliban”.
  • (9) It is suggested that if change in the biomedical system is a goal of a critical clinical anthropology, the impact will be greater where objective and broad causal connections can be demonstrated with minimal use of rote or polemic arguments.
  • (10) And the groundbreaking forays into popular culture - his examinations of the British seaside postcard and boys' comics - and the revered polemical essays appeared in periodicals such as Horizon and Polemic.
  • (11) But Florian Philippot, Le Pen’s closest adviser, dismissed the accusations as “a campaign polemic”, describing Jalkh as “serious, moderate … a patriot and an honest man”.
  • (12) Based on considerable personal experience and a rigorous and critical analysis of case-reports, a highly polemic subject is discussed.
  • (13) I do not wish to engage in polemics regarding the relative worth of behavioral and psychodynamic theories of treatment, but this paper reflects my own misgivings about certain aspects of the token economy and is concerned more with the quality of the ward atmosphere it creates than with specific behavior changes.
  • (14) In one of the more conspiracy theorising polemics I have read in some while, he described this wealth-creating, free-trading, economic stimulus simply as "a monstrous assault on democracy" by institutions, "which have been captured by the corporations they are supposed to regulate".
  • (15) Since antiquity, puerperal mental disorders have always been the field of polemics concerning the different possible etiopathogenic hypothesis.
  • (16) Often the boundary between experience and polemic gets blurred.
  • (17) They range from the generally accepted to the frankly polemical and the merely heuristic.
  • (18) Walden aims at conversion, and Thoreau's polemical purpose gives it an energy and drive missing in the meanders of the sole other book he saw into publication during his short lifetime, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849).
  • (19) The main polemic is over whether it is most useful to evaluate the total estsrogens or the individual fractions.
  • (20) It is clear that polemic is not sufficient and that consensus practices can only be based upon firm scientifically acquired data and detailed discussion of the options by those most intimately involved.