Definition of POLEMIC

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When polemic was borrowed into English from French polemique in the mid-17th century, it referred (as it still can) to a type of hostile attack on someone's ideas. The word traces back to Greek polemikos, which means "warlike" or "hostile" and in turn comes from the Greek noun polemos, meaning "war." Other, considerably less common descendants of polemos in English include polemarch ("a chieftain or military commander in ancient Greece"), polemoscope (a kind of binoculars with an oblique mirror), and polemology ("the study of war").

Examples of polemic in a Sentence

Her book is a fierce polemic against the inequalities in our society. They managed to discuss the issues without resorting to polemics.

Recent Examples on the Web Maybe the book’s most ingenious trick, though, is that its reflections on race and feminism hardly ever feel like polemics; there’s just too much pure vivid life on every page. — Leah Greenblatt, EW.com, "Booker Prize winner Girl, Woman, Other is an essential novel of race and gender: Review," 3 Dec. 2019 Chin’s first poem is a polemic against President Donald Trump, which elicits yells of support along with sharp laughs and applause. — Abigail Abrams, Time, "'We Are Grabbing Our Own Microphones': How Advocates of Reproductive Justice Stepped Into the Spotlight," 21 Nov. 2019 Newspapers and magazines are full of reassessments of the Wiedervereinigung (reunification); westerners are lapping up memoirs and polemics by eastern authors. — The Economist, "Germans still don’t agree on what reunification meant," 31 Oct. 2019 Notwithstanding the Times’ political leaning, the placement of her polemic against the president in the Calendar section of the paper seems inappropriate. — Los Angeles Times, "Calendar Feedback Sun., Oct. 13, 2019," 11 Oct. 2019 Most notably, the recent and not-so-recent past was revisited again and again, not to exploit simple nostalgia but to illuminate present-day realities that hovered over nearly every movie - whether fiction or nonfiction, polemic or pure escapism. — cleveland.com, "At the Toronto International Film Festival, movies grapple with a confounding present by revisiting the past," 13 Sep. 2019 Most notably, the recent and not-so-recent past was revisited again and again, not to exploit simple nostalgia but to illuminate present-day realities that hovered over nearly every movie - whether fiction or nonfiction, polemic or pure escapism. — cleveland.com, "At the Toronto International Film Festival, movies grapple with a confounding present by revisiting the past," 13 Sep. 2019 In the 1880s, says Perdue, during a moment of Chinese backlash against foreign interference, a prominent Canton merchant came out with a best-selling polemic against free trade. — Yoni Wilkenfeld, Quartz, "From tea to iPhones, US-China trade tensions span centuries," 6 Nov. 2019 Carson’s great elegy and polemic, which followed pesticides through their whole cycle of destruction, ignored the mainly Latino farm workers of California and Florida, who were directly exposed to pesticides in their work in the fields. — Will Meyer, Longreads, "A Green New Jail," 24 Oct. 2019

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'polemic.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.