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Oct 21, 2025
This week’s theme
Adjectives

This week’s words
acerbic
polemical

polemical
Plato & Aristotle in The School of Athens (detail) (1509-1511)
Art: Raphael

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

polemical

PRONUNCIATION:
(puh-LEM-uh-kuhl)

MEANING:
adjective: Relating to or involving strong, critical, or controversial writing or speech.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Greek polemikos, from polemos (war). A related word is polemology (the science and study of human conflict and war). Earliest documented use: 1615.

USAGE:
“Perhaps, [Phil Wang] says, the gags would come easier if he were more polemical. ‘It’s much more funny to have a really strong opinion about something and scream about it, than it is to say: But let’s look at this from the other perspective.’”
Seriously Funny; The Economist (London, UK); Apr 2, 2022.

See more usage examples of polemical in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals, the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great creative scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned if at all. -Martin Gardner, mathematician and writer (21 Oct 1914-2010)

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