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vocabulary
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polemic

used in a sentence
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Definition a strongly opinionated argument — especially over a belief or dogma
  • Half way through the book it changed from a dispassionate history to a polemic.
  • He [Luther] also wrote a polemic against Archbishop Albrecht, which forced him to desist from reopening the sale of indulgences...
    Martin Luther - Wikipedia  --  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther (retrieved 05/20/06)
  • She published a polemic arguing that orchestras are now on "the sidelines of culture" and that their decline is "unstoppable".
  • Plato's polemic against the sophists has persuaded generations.
  • In a play on Clausewitz's statement, "War is merely the continuation of policy by other means," he said "terrorism is the continuation of a religious polemic by other means."
  • Many polemical descriptions of Islam have focused critically on the Islamic concept of jihad.
    Islam - MSN Encarta  --  http://encarta.msn.com/text_761579171___0/Islam.html (retrieved 05/21/06)
  • exclaimed little Alice, who contrived to feel a human interest even in these discords of polemic divinity.
    Hawthorne, Nathaniel  --  Grandfather's Chair
  • Learn to demolish your brotherly opponents with ideas, with polemic skill.
    Ralph Ellison  --  Invisible Man
  • The words merely serve the pictures of the subject in question, employing the facts for the tabloid polemic of how a city should be run, justice served.
    Chang-rae Lee  --  Native Speaker
  • I sometimes believed her marriage views, except that they weren't polemical, were similar to Mimi's.
    Saul Bellow  --  The Adventures of Augie March
  • At the very least, this trial should create a national polemic on the evils of slavery.
    Alexs Pate  --  Amistad
  • They strike me as polemical, as angry indictments of Afghan gender roles.
    Khaled Hosseini  --  And The Mountains Echoed
  • It's as if Rogelio's response has justified every polemic.
    Christina Garcia  --  Dreaming in Cuban
  • She had no opinions on anything more polemic than woolen union-suits, a topic on which Mrs. Howland discoursed for five minutes.
    Sinclair Lewis  --  Main Street
  • The second of them, no polemic, murmured quieter things: Why should we faint, and fear to live alone, Since all alone, so Heaven has will'd, we die?
    Thomas Hardy  --  Jude the Obscure
  • "Dag's book is a polemic aimed at the people who are making money from trafficking.
    Stieg Larsson  --  The Girl Who Played with Fire
  • At another sits the polemical divine, plodding and wrangling in his mind about Adam's fall in which we sinned, all as his primer has it.
    David McCullough  --  John Adams
  • "I became suddenly aware," Kennedy adviser Richard Goodwin will later write, "that Bobby's harsh polemic reflected the president's concealed emotions, privately communicated in some earlier, intimate conversation.
    Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard  --  Killing Kennedy
  • Fiedler, knowing no doubt that the danger of a subsequent countercharge was inherent in such cases, was protecting his own back; the polemic would go down in the record and it would be a brave man who set himself to refute it.
    John Le Carre  --  The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
  • But d'Artagnan took very little heed of the eloquent discourse of M. Bazin; and as he had no desire to support a polemic discussion with his friend's valet, he simply moved him out of the way with one hand, and with the other turned the handle of the door of Number Five.
    Alexandre Dumas  --  The Three Musketeers

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