polemic

UK/pəˈlɛmɪk/US/pəˈlɛmɪk/

nounC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,809 of 15,258mostly written

Other forms: polemics

A polemic is a fierce written attack on an opinion. A brilliant polemic.

It is meant to win rather than to be fair, and everybody reading knows it. A polemic can be true and is never balanced, which is the point of the form.

Definitions of polemic

1nounpolemicA fierce written attack on an opinion.C2
“The polemic ran to four hundred pages.”

polemic is a writing.

Where it comes from

Greek polemikos, of war, from polemos, war.

Ancient Greek
πολεμικός — of war
French
polémique
English, today
polemic

Built from

πόλεμος · Ancient Greek — war

From French polémique, from Ancient Greek πολεμικός (“of war”), from πόλεμος (“war”). by surface analysis, polem- + -ic.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

polemic in the wild

The term had some currency in polemic debates about the Cold War.
Moral equivalence
Discussions of atheism, humanism, and Christianity have remained open to polemic into the 21st century.
Polemic
Topics range from polemic assaults on pop culture figures to reflections on Spider-Man and his diagnosis with morbid obesity.
Silent Bob Speaks
Though it is not a polemic, the work in part extends support to Colin Renfrew's Anatolian hypothesis of Indo-European origins.
Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture
The Anticato (sometimes Anti-Cato; Latin: Anticatones) is a lost polemic written by Julius Caesar in hostile reply to Cicero's pamphlet praising Cato the Younger.
Anticato

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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