How to Use polemical in a Sentence

polemical

adjective
Definition of polemicalnext
Synonyms for polemicalnext
  • Many of them have not mastered the polemical ease with which to speak and convince.
    — Los Angeles Times, 4 Apr. 2022
  • But a good deal of recent polemical art suggests a use-by date that is not far in the future.
    — Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 21 Dec. 2020
  • The songs that land on the slightly polemical side are the album’s most powerful.
    — Chris Willman, Variety, 24 Sep. 2021
  • The New Negro was a hero, a fetish, a polemical posture—and a blurry portrait of a flinching soul.
    — Tobi Haslett, The New Yorker, 11 May 2018
  • Next month, Reed will publish a book that is, in the context of his polemical writing, unusual.
    — Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker, 31 Jan. 2022
  • Neither the Apple nor the Gabriel plays are exhortative in any polemical way.
    — Ben Brantley, New York Times, 9 Nov. 2016
  • When Godard and his peers began to make their own films, the world was able to see their vibrant, impish, polemical ideas about film put into action.
    — K. Austin Collins, Rolling Stone, 14 Sep. 2022
  • Within the heat of polemical exchange, there’s unfairness on both sides.
    — Jeet Heer, New Republic, 20 Dec. 2017
  • Blog posts are short, topical, and often polemical in a narrow way.
    — Robert Minto, New Republic, 7 Sep. 2017
  • But his astute argument would have been better served by a less-polemical tone.
    — Washington Post, 12 Nov. 2021
  • The tables are stacked, almost like a bookstore, with multiple copies of polemical works mostly aimed at the Clintons.
    — Anchorage Daily News, 12 Feb. 2018
  • The path his company chose, Boreing told me, is to avoid making polemical films.
    — Andy Meek, Forbes, 13 May 2022
  • The modern insanity defense has long been polemical, and the legal standards vary from state to state.
    — James C. McKinley Jr. and Jan Ransom, New York Times, 27 Mar. 2018
  • The fact is, no great work of art can endure being drawn and quartered for a polemical purity ritual.
    — Washington Post, 27 Oct. 2021
  • Positivism may not be possible in a pure form, but there's a spectrum between the objective and polemical.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 30 Aug. 2010
  • In a polemical era, rationality can be a kind of opinion hygiene—a way of washing off misjudged views.
    — The New Yorker, 16 Aug. 2021
  • Toyota embraces polemical design with the Avalon's tall four-door successor, the 2023 Crown.
    — Mark Takahashi, Car and Driver, 13 Dec. 2022
  • The new document talks about gender and transgender people in a less polemical way than the church has done previously.
    — Eloise Blondiau, Vox, 12 June 2019
  • But even in these books, handpicked by Dworkin for polemical purposes, there seems more going on than her narrow reading allows.
    — Elaine Blair, The New York Review of Books, 17 June 2019
  • Overtly polemical, it is meant as a musical riposte to the right-wing nationalism gripping Europe and other places around the world.
    — Bruce Handy, The New Yorker, 21 Nov. 2022
  • Only Stettheimer, of the feminist artists of her time, would have spoken up so ferociously for the polemical importance of pink tulle.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 21 Feb. 2022
  • However, the themes found release in other forms, mostly polemical.
    — Los Angeles Times, 23 Sep. 2021
  • Her personal odyssey is more stirring than any polemical manifesto could be.
    — Ann Hulbert, The Atlantic, 12 Sep. 2017
  • Ferguson’s eight chapters on the comparative study of disasters lack the polemical force of his briefer reflections on Covid-19.
    — Ian Beacock, The New Republic, 7 June 2021
  • Certainly, the anti-liberals, or, in Harari’s case, post-humanists, have much the better of the rhetorical energy and polemical brio.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 20 Mar. 2017
  • Dreams From Our Founding Fathers is a revealing treatise, lively and polemical.
    — David Waldstreicher, The Atlantic, 22 Feb. 2023
  • So says Aby Rosen, New York real estate developer and author of the new polemical chapter in the story of one of the country’s most hallowed dining establishments.
    — Gabe Ulla, Town & Country, 9 Aug. 2017
  • Milestone, a Russian immigrant with a strong leftist streak, refused to soften the polemical edge of Remarque’s story.
    — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 9 Feb. 2023
  • Even before a single vote has been cast, the exercise has devolved into a polemical shouting match between the president and his detractors.
    — Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 31 July 2021
  • Mailer, whether in his fiction, polemical essays or reportage, always aimed to be consequential, to be fiercely engaged with his times.
    — Washington Post, 6 Oct. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'polemical.' 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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