tendentious

adjective

ten·den·tious | \ ten-ˈden(t)-shəs

Definition of tendentious

: marked by a tendency in favor of a particular point of view : biased

Other Words from tendentious Did You Know? Example Sentences Learn More about tendentious

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Did You Know?

Tendentious is one of several words English speakers can choose when they want to suggest that someone has made up his or her mind in advance. You may be partial to predisposed or prone to favor partisan, but whatever your leanings, we're inclined to think you'll benefit from adding tendentious to your repertoire. A derivative of the Medieval Latin word tendentia, meaning "tendency," plus the English suffix -ious, tendentious has been used in English as an adjective for biased attitudes since at least 1900.

Examples of tendentious in a Sentence

He made some extremely tendentious remarks.

Recent Examples on the Web

The Duplass brothers’ new series represents a huge advance over those previous, thoroughly tendentious treatments, in two major ways. — Win Mccormack, The New Republic, "Outside the Limits of the Human Imagination," 27 Mar. 2018 Even the names of the effects are more tendentious than descriptive. — Daniel Engber, Slate Magazine, "Does a school’s enrollment really go down when students protest en masse?," 12 Sep. 2017 That historical account would be as self-serving and tendentious, in its own way, as our current glorious one. — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, "We Could Have Been Canada," 15 May 2017

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