strongly critical or controversial writing or opinion. The opposite of an encomium.
► uses
Uses:
Clark French had turned writing fiction into a polemical competition.
John Irving. Avenue of Mysteries, p.344 (2015)
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Who could say if his colleagues would not write against him. Polemics would ensue; he would have to answer in the papers. Hippolyte might even prosecute him.
Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary
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Never such a wealth of literature, worthy its twenty-four-hour immortality, as the articles proving, and proving by figures, that American wages were universally higher, commodities universally lower-priced, war budgets smaller but the army and its equipment much larger, than ever in history. Never such righteous polemics as the proofs that all non-Corpos were Communists.
Sinclair Lewis. It Can't Happen Here
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This fourth gospel is not—say Theists—a simple biography of Jesus written by a loving disciple as a memorial of a departed and cherished friend, but a history written with a special object and to prove a certain doctrine. "St. John's gospel is a polemical treatise," echoes Dr. Liddon.