How to Use polemic in a Sentence

polemic

noun
Definition of polemicnext
Synonyms for polemicnext
  • Her book is a fierce polemic against the inequalities in our society.
  • They managed to discuss the issues without resorting to polemics.
  • But the movie does not work like a tract, or a polemic.
    — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune, 14 Oct. 2022
  • Take, for example, The Nation of Plants, a polemic in the guise of a plea.
    — Megan Garber, The Atlantic, 20 Apr. 2021
  • But this was not a polemic or a couple of hours filled by dry lessons.
    — Rick Kogan, chicagotribune.com, 23 Nov. 2020
  • The New York Times casts such polemics in a sinister light.
    — Jonathan S. Tobin, National Review, 24 Apr. 2020
  • The cheap and easy way to write a polemic is to attack the very worst people on the other side of your argument.
    — Dan McLaughlin, National Review, 14 June 2021
  • Gertner, a journalist for the New York Times, does not wax polemic.
    — David Holahan, USA TODAY, 11 June 2019
  • Perhaps the thing that annoyed me about Dziebel's style is that the polemic is its shamelessness.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 31 July 2012
  • The usual art polemics of protests past will not work this time, on audience and target alike.
    — Christopher Borrelli, chicagotribune.com, 27 Apr. 2017
  • All three of the winning books deal explicitly with race, one of them in a mode of bitter polemic.
    — Meghan Cox Gurdon, WSJ, 31 Jan. 2020
  • No, that doesn’t make Carrie’s story feel dated or read like a polemic.
    — Carol Memmott, Washington Post, 17 Aug. 2022
  • The radical polemics of the panels must have seemed incendiary in the 1930s.
    — David Lyon, BostonGlobe.com, 15 Sep. 2023
  • But in their polemics, these men are aligning themselves with the gerontocracy against the young.
    — Jeet Heer, New Republic, 9 Aug. 2017
  • But Gerwig’s screenplay is the farthest thing from a polemic against the oppressiveness of men.
    — John Matteson, The Atlantic, 1 Jan. 2020
  • Not since Manet’s Olympia has the exposure of a woman’s body incited such polemic.
    — Norman Jean Roy, Vogue, 14 Dec. 2016
  • But why make these points in a novel and not, say, a tract, journalistic report, or polemic?
    — Nathaniel Rich, The Atlantic, 11 May 2018
  • The writer-director Cristian Mungiu doesn’t pull any punches and yet, somehow, the movie is not a shrill polemic.
    — Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor, 27 Apr. 2023
  • Yet there follows no Sorkin-style polemic; rather, the show’s sympathies emerge through a sheer richness of detail.
    — Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, 25 Feb. 2021
  • To some degree, Years and Years is another Davies polemic that is full of opinions about where the future is taking us.
    — Liz Shannon Miller, The Verge, 2 July 2019
  • Pullman is too savvy to indulge in the kind of simplistic polemic that propels the celebrity of New Atheists like Richard Dawkins.
    — Sarah Jones, New Republic, 30 Oct. 2017
  • The goal isn’t to write polemics, but songs that will touch people and not immediately feel dated.
    — Washington Post, 1 Feb. 2020
  • But amid today’s fierce polemics, even scholarly discussion of the term is fraught.
    — Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times, 22 Jan. 2024
  • The bad news is that Shriver’s affinity for the polemic has infected her fiction.
    — Mark Athitakis, Washington Post, 20 Sep. 2022
  • This is not a story about women’s failures, or a polemic against their advancement.
    — Emma Green, The Atlantic, 19 Sep. 2016
  • Besides, polemics from both sides rarely address the complexities of the issue.
    — Marcos Bretón, sacbee, 3 Sep. 2017
  • The exhibition unfolds as a polemic, with dozens of artists pitted against each other.
    — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 22 Sep. 2022
  • All of this makes Gun Island not just a disappointing story, but also a weak polemic.
    — Abhrajyoti Chakraborty, The New Republic, 8 Oct. 2019
  • Books written in a time of crisis can make bad blueprints for a time of plenty, as polemics made in times of war are not always the best blueprint for policies in times of peace.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 26 Sep. 2016
  • Yet the book remains instructive because, as with so many polemics, a flawed central premise hints at some important truths.
    — Hans Kundnani, Foreign Affairs, 24 Oct. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'polemic.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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