What's the difference between debatable and dubious?

Debatable


Definition:

  • (a.) Liable to be debated; disputable; subject to controversy or contention; open to question or dispute; as, a debatable question.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In a debate in the House of Commons, I will ask Britain, the US and other allies to convert generalised offers of help into more practical support with greater air cover, military surveillance and helicopter back-up, to hunt down the terrorists who abducted the girls.
  • (2) In attacking the motion to freeze the licence fee during today's Parliamentary debate the culture secretary, Andy Burnham, criticised the Tory leader.
  • (3) Amid the acrimony of the failed debate on the Malaysia Agreement, something was missed or forgotten: many in the left had changed their mind.
  • (4) The first experiment gave good results, although only one participant had any previous experience of hinge axis location, and it is debatable whether or not this experience is necessary before satisfactory results can be obtained.
  • (5) She said that even as she approached the gates, she was debating with the boy’s father whether to let the first-grader enter.
  • (6) But because current donor contributions are not sufficient to cover the thousands of schools in need of security, I will ask in the commons debate that the UK government allocates more.
  • (7) In a poll before the debate, 48% predicted that Merkel, who will become Europe's longest serving leader if re-elected on 22 September, would emerge as the winner of the US-style debate, while 26% favoured Steinbruck, a former finance minister who is known for his quick-wit and rhetorical skills, but sometimes comes across as arrogant.
  • (8) Conservative commentators responded with fury to what they believed was inappropriate meddling at a crucial moment in the town hall debate.
  • (9) The citizenship debate is tawdry, conflated and ultimately pointless | Richard Ackland Read more On Wednesday, the prime minister criticised lawyers for backing terrorists.
  • (10) While there has been almost no political reform during their terms of office, there have been several ambitious steps forward in terms of environmental policy: anti-desertification campaigns; tree planting; an environmental transparency law; adoption of carbon targets; eco-services compensation; eco accounting; caps on water; lower economic growth targets; the 12th Five-Year Plan; debate and increased monitoring of PM2.5 [fine particulate matter] and huge investments in eco-cities, "clean car" manufacturing, public transport, energy-saving devices and renewable technology.
  • (11) All 17 candidates are going to be participating in debate night and I think that’s a wonderful opportunity Reince Priebus Republican party officials have defended the decision to limit participation, pointing out that the chasing pack will get a chance to debate separately before the main event.
  • (12) "Medical professionals have perhaps been the least involved [of all sectors] in debates and discussions around abortion, and anti-choice groups have very effectively carried out a deliberate strategy of targeting and influencing health professionals.
  • (13) The only thing the media will talk about in the hours and days after the debate will be Trump’s refusal to say he will accept the results of the election, making him appear small, petty and conspiratorial.
  • (14) Opposition to legal abortion takes magical thinking and a lack of logic | Jessica Valenti Read more The only female Republican candidate for the White House has doubled down on her restrictive position over reproductive rights since a successful debate performance .
  • (15) Although the debate in the US has led to some piecemeal reforms – including the USA Freedom Act and modest policy changes – many of the most intrusive government surveillance programs remain largely intact.
  • (16) The debate certainly hit upon a larger issue: the tendency for people in positions of social and cultural power to tell the stories of minorities for them, rather than allowing minority communities to speak for themselves.
  • (17) On the mothers' internet forum Mumsnet, 44% of women who voted in a post-debate survey said they were now thinking of voting Lib Dem, compared with 23% three weeks ago.
  • (18) Both a voter and Cooper repeatedly asked him if he stood by his comments in the last Republican presidential debate when he insisted that was the case.
  • (19) Before the debate, most of our focus group expected David Cameron to win narrowly “because he’s best at debates”.
  • (20) The treatment of hypertension in pregnancy has been a matter of debate, but the treatment of choice in late pregnancy is delivery.

Dubious


Definition:

  • (a.) Doubtful or not settled in opinion; being in doubt; wavering or fluctuating; undetermined.
  • (a.) Occasioning doubt; not clear, or obvious; equivocal; questionable; doubtful; as, a dubious answer.
  • (a.) Of uncertain event or issue; as, in dubious battle.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It’s impossible to automate fully the process of separating truth from falsehood, and it’s dubious to cede such control to for-profit media giants.
  • (2) The draw was enough to take England to the finals in Japan, where Beckham exorcised the demons of four years earlier by scoring the only goal (a dubiously awarded penalty) in the defeat of Argentina.
  • (3) But Blair's address - "history will forgive us" - was a dubious exercise in group therapy: the cheers smacked of pathetic gratitude, as he piously pardoned the legislators, as well as himself, for the catastrophe of Iraq.
  • (4) I drive past buildings that I know, or assume, to house bedsits, their stucco peeling like eczema, their window frames rattling like old bones, and I cannot help myself from picturing the scene within: a dubious pot on an equally dubious single ring, the female in charge of it half-heartedly stirring its contents at the same time as she files her nails, reads an old Vogue, or chats to some distant parent on the telephone.
  • (5) A dubious pattern is emerging of donations through front companies.
  • (6) The relationship of this metabolic aberration to the production of headache still remains dubious for various reasons.
  • (7) During his stints in the Bush and Obama administration Comey has continually taken authoritarian and factually dubious public stances both at odds with responsible public policy and sometimes the law.
  • (8) Today the overestimation of human understanding is reflected in a dogmatic adherence to specific professional or idealogically biased doctrines and in the dubious ideal of a purely empirical science with its limited applicability to mankind.
  • (9) It seems clear that even as we buy cheap clothes with dubious provenance, from an ethical standpoint, people want to do better.
  • (10) Their mechanism is dubious: swelling of mitochondria and intracellular lipidosis, which could signify cellular hypoxia, are rarely present.
  • (11) Imprecise definitions of these complications of necrotizing pancreatitis make inter-institutional comparisons of previously identified data dubious.
  • (12) Critics say this is part of a broader, dubious attempt to appease the Kremlin and boost bilateral trade.
  • (13) In his attempt to justify the unjustifiable, Mr Grieve has clutched at a fragile constitutional doctrine and adopted a deeply dubious legal course.
  • (14) Exporting what appear to be educational success stories is a dubious enterprise, because it is so easy to misread how another country's system works and to discount its cultural background.
  • (15) Observed retrospectively, in some cases death was the result of dubious indication.
  • (16) The Guardian’s own readers’ anthology of dubious deals – crusty rolls 40p, two for £1!
  • (17) Sensitivity (dubious + positive, after exclusion of inadequates) was 0.83 and dependent on histologic type (infiltrating = 0.87, intraductal = 0.68).
  • (18) The vice-president even made repeated trips to CIA headquarters in Langley to bully analysts into producing more hawkish reports, while Rumsfeld’s Pentagon sucked up highly dubious “evidence” from Iraqi exiles and ideological freelancers.
  • (19) This becomes very dubious when they are more numerous.
  • (20) The change in surface tension did not correlate with a change in lung retractive forces or with lung lipid content and was, therefore, of dubious biological significance.