disputatious
adjective
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The History of Disputatious Isn't Controversial
Quarrelsome, contentious, polemical—the English language sure loves a multisyllabic word to describe your tetchier types, and who are we to argue? Disputatious is another lengthy adjective applied to people who like to start arguments or find something to disagree about, and it can be used to characterize situations and issues as well. For example, court trials are disputatious; that is, they are marked by the action of disputing. And an issue or matter is disputatious if it provokes controversy. However, if a matter, such as an assertion made by someone, is open to question rather than downright controversial, it’s merely disputable. In any case, there’s no arguing that disputatious, dispute, and disputable have diverged somewhat in meaning from their Latin source: the verb disputare means simply "to discuss."
Examples of disputatious in a Sentence
Matthew Carey, Deadline, 12 Jan. 2025
Hoback followed Back to a Bitcoin conference in Riga, Latvia, where Back introduced him to one of his younger protégés, a prominent if disputatious Bitcoin developer named Peter Todd.
—Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker, 9 Oct. 2024
This disputatious sociopolitical drama is cunningly packaged as a romantic comedy.
—Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times, 23 May 2024
Still, even by these disputatious standards, the arguments that have been carrying on around Amherst Regional Middle School, or ARMS, have been vociferous.
—Jessica Winter, The New Yorker, 3 Apr. 2024
The 1990s were especially disputatious; civil wars arose on multiple continents, as did major wars in Europe and Africa.
—Paul Poast, The Atlantic, 17 Nov. 2023
Mercurial, determined, needy, disputatious—the moods more so than seasons of Acker’s life were rapid, and any biography is bound to contradict and complement and hone the myths that continue to attract us to her writing and her symbol.
—Liz Sullivan, Hazlitt, 5 Dec. 2022
Today’s disputatious conservatives are leading our latest effort to conjoin individual freedom and collective purpose.
—Christopher Demuth, WSJ, 18 Nov. 2022
Its lament resonates for art once seen as a disputatious civic forum, now overrun by the hard coin of investment markets.
—Los Angeles Times, 21 Nov. 2021
Cite this Entry
“Disputatious.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disputatious. Accessed 21 May. 2025.
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disputatious
adjective
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