What's the difference between contentious and provocative?

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.

Provocative


Definition:

  • (a.) Serving or tending to provoke, excite, or stimulate; exciting.
  • (n.) Anything that is provocative; a stimulant; as, a provocative of appetite.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The degree of increase in Meth responsiveness elicited by the initial provocation is a major factor in determining the airway response to a subsequent HS challenge.
  • (2) The sensitivity and specificity of three methods of provocation, ie, histamine, nebulized water, and exercise, were compared in 20 asthmatic and 20 control children between ages 5 and 13 years.
  • (3) By its pragmatic conception, modifications obtained by psychoactive agents are used (antidepressants of the group imipramine and IMAO, classical benzodiazepines and alprazolam, provocation controlled in laboratory) in order to strengthen innovating hypotheses and allow to elaborate useful treatment strategies for neuroses.
  • (4) The essentials of standardizations of bronchial provocation tests from the clinical point of view are mentioned.
  • (5) Aggressive responding was maintained by contingent presentation of periods free of point subtractions, i.e., provocations.
  • (6) Their medical histories were consulted and further measures were taken such as a radiological thorax study, total IgE, TDI, MDI and HDI RAST, a basal spirometric study and finally a provocation test.
  • (7) Thus, patients are likely to live longer after CABG if they have left main disease; three-vessel disease with left ventricular dysfunction (ejection fraction less than 50%), class III or IV angina, provocable ischemia, or disease in the proximal left anterior descending coronary artery; two-vessel disease with proximal left anterior descending artery involvement; and two-vessel disease with class III or IV angina as well as either severe left ventricular dysfunction alone or moderate left ventricular dysfunction together with at least one proximal lesion.
  • (8) To further determine if basophil histamine releasability in asthma correlated to measures of airway reactivity, bronchial provocation with histamine was performed.
  • (9) In this study we investigated the role of interleukin 1 (IL 1) in the induction of inflammatory lesions and in the preparation and provocation of the local Shwartzman reaction.
  • (10) Photograph: Rex Features If Brookstein had confined his anger to legitimate provocations, it would be easier to sympathise, for he seems to have suffered more than enough of them on The X Factor.
  • (11) The comedian Daniel O’Reilly, who gives laddish advice on how to “pull birds” under the guise of a deliberately provocative character in the ITV2 series, has proved controversial for lines such as “Just show her your penis.
  • (12) Johnson said the attacks were clearly provocations against the police.
  • (13) Esmolol produced slight but statistically significant enhancement of patients' sensitivity to dry air provocation.
  • (14) Drones are not only provocative and illegal in international law but have also led to the killing of many innocent civilians in other countries that has had a serious impact on how the US is perceived in the region.
  • (15) I am not a Muslim but I see that the cover has been read as yet more provocation, even an undoing of the unity of the marches in Paris and other cities.
  • (16) Frequency of sensitivity to foods, preservatives, colouring agents, medical substances, principally shown by provocation tests (the latter present a considerable interest, and merit frequent use); importance of bacterian, mycotic, parasitic origins; little importance of atopy; frequency of minor psychogenic disorders.
  • (17) It was suggested that a positive provocation test is accompanied by an increase in fibrinolytic activity in the circulating blood of patients with focal infection of the tonsil, and the increase in fibrinolytic activity is closely related to the positiveness of the provocation test.
  • (18) Provocation of poliomyelitis occurred in 66% of children and usually followed intragluteal injections associated with treatment of non-specific fevers.
  • (19) Although children with constitutional delay of growth are believed to have no medical or endocrine abnormality to explain their short stature, some controversy regarding their growth hormone secretory status has recently surfaced; some authors have reported low growth hormone levels to provocative stimuli and decreased growth hormone secretion during sleep, as well as low somatomedin C values in some children with constitutional delay of growth.
  • (20) Some women attended the protest wearing jeans and T-shirts, while others took the mission of reclaiming the word "slut" – one of the stated objectives of the movement – more literally and turned out in overtly provocative fishnets and stilettos.