(v. t.) To contend for in words or arguments; to strive to maintain by reasoning; to dispute; to contest; to discuss; to argue for and against.
(v. i.) To engage in strife or combat; to fight.
(v. i.) To contend in words; to dispute; hence, to deliberate; to consider; to discuss or examine different arguments in the mind; -- often followed by on or upon.
(v. t.) A fight or fighting; contest; strife.
(v. t.) Contention in words or arguments; discussion for the purpose of elucidating truth or influencing action; strife in argument; controversy; as, the debates in Parliament or in Congress.
(v. t.) Subject of discussion.
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.
Parlance
Definition:
(n.) Conversation; discourse; talk; diction; phrase; as, in legal parlance; in common parlance.
Example Sentences:
(1) They were not oleophobe fanatics here to attack the Petrobras, nor Oil Firsters, here to kill him, his colleagues and all those who came to investigate or exploit, in their parlance, the visitations.
(2) The label of 'functional dyspepsia' is well-established medical parlance in these circumstances and is generally accepted as the converse of 'organic dyspepsia', which denotes dyspepsia for which a responsible disease process has been identified.
(3) Our skin is not being subjected to newfangled cosmetic preparations in order to observe whether we come out in plooks (Scots parlance for the common spot).
(4) That process is known as "incidental collection" in surveillance parlance.
(5) Every modern government returned with a majority looks to take advantage of its first few months when the opposition is in disarray by ditching some impractical pledges (“taking out the trash” in the parlance of special advisers), pushing through unpopular measures, maybe adding some nasty ones, while seeking to establish a narrative that will cause their electoral rivals difficulties once they have finished mourning the poll win that never came.
(6) When it comes to her political career, Clinton is a consummate politician – she is, in the parlance of the New York Times , “no angel”.
(7) Officials, not wanting to be lambasted for taking too prominent a role in the game, seem more keen than ever to, in the common parlance, “let them play”.
(8) In the parlance of his Justice and Development (AK) party this has been a democratic revolution, weeding out a “deep state” within a state.
(9) In addition to finance, one of the biggest areas of contentious is “differentiation” in UN parlance – which countries should bear the burden of cutting emissions that cause climate change.
(10) Multiplex, for its part, has become more and more keen to 'close the book', in construction parlance, on a job which has brought it unprecedented criticism, and led to tensions among the firm's hierarchy and shareholders in Australia.
(11) For many decades, thoughtful hacks have argued about whether journalism is a profession or a trade; in normal parlance, however, the opposite of "professional" is "amateur", and this is more in line with what is happening today - the notion that anyone can "do" journalism.
(12) McGuigan was sentenced to a “six pack”, which, translated from Belfast street parlance, means gunshot wounds to the feet, knees, hands and elbows.
(13) Previously, this data had been stripped out of NSA databases – "minimised", in intelligence agency parlance – under rules agreed between the two countries.
(14) Among Main's (1957) several cogent insights about the nature of defensive and countertransferential reactions to those so-called "special" patients who ungraciously refuse to improve - patients who in today's parlance would most assuredly be diagnosed as borderline - is his hypothesis that some of us may flee some of the time into research activities to avoid the frustrations and disappointments of clinical work.
(15) And the action against them therefore needed to be commensurate – concomitant in Cyril Ramaphosa's parlance .
(16) Other media have taken similar stands in public, with one private TV channel saying it intended to bar certain guests from its political programmes on charges of being “rumour mongers” – parlance for government critics.
(17) The word 'pleb' seems to have passed into common parlance."
(18) The chief instigator of offshore stress is time which in oil parlance is money, writes Patrick Whyte, an offshore medical officer.
(19) But his looming reincarnation as the all-powerful, executive president of Russia – the country's "paramount leader" in Chinese parlance – poses a stark challenge for which the US, Britain and other beleaguered western powers seem ill-prepared.
(20) Or in the parlance of the moment, "the strivers" v "the skivers".