Sample Sentences for
contentious
(editor-reviewed)

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    PARRIS: Giles Corey, sir, and a more contentious—  (source)
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    Now, eight years after her contentious funeral ... he changed his mind.  (source)
    contentious = combative (involving argument or heated differences)
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    It is the beauty of small areas of order—a large yard, a group of trees, three similar dormitories, a circle of old houses—living together in contentious harmony.  (source)
    contentious = causing or likely to cause disagreement
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Show 10 more with 4 word variations
  • •
    "'It is better,'" I recited piously, "'to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house with a contentious woman."  (source)
    contentious = argumentative or likely to cause disagreement
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    It was as though the sirens heralded the presence of some cont rolling mechanism—a thing we would do well not to provoke with our contentiousness and spilled food.†  (source)
    standard suffix: The suffix "-ness" converts an adjective to a noun that means the quality of. This is the same pattern you see in words like darkness, kindness, and coolness.
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    "Now, Ben, he was a Roman—let me tell," said Letty, using her elbow contentiously.†  (source)
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    It's a noncontentious sort of meat.†  (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "non-" in noncontentious means not and reverses the meaning of contentious. This is the same pattern you see in words like nonfat, nonfiction, and nonprofit.
  • •
    "Samuel," she said, "you're the most contentious man this world has ever seen."  (source)
    contentious = argumentative
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    The purpose of the assignment is to instill a degree of contentiousness on the part of the one driving the car.†  (source)
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    "How different?" he inquired, solemnly and contentiously, taking up a glass and drinking from it.†  (source)
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    He became contentious and started making comments that were audible to the judge.†  (source)
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    They carried everything to extremes, these two, as was probably necessary for the sake of argument, and squabbled fiercely over the most extreme choices, whereas it seemed to him that what one might, in a spirit of conciliation, declare truly human or humane had to lie somewhere in the middle of this intolerant contentiousness, somewhere between rhetorical humanism and illiterate barbarism.†  (source)
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    But next on the docket was a subject that proved more contentious.†  (source)
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