How to Use polemic in a Sentence

polemic

noun
  • Her book is a fierce polemic against the inequalities in our society.
  • They managed to discuss the issues without resorting to polemics.
  • Same polemic, just with Bush-era archetypes.
    — Emma Green, New Yorker, 6 Apr. 2026
  • Science, not polemics, must guide us here.
    — Bill Weld, Foreign Affairs, 8 Oct. 2019
  • Don’t be in a gossip space or in a space of polemics.
    — Nick Miller, New York Times, 18 Mar. 2026
  • But this was not a polemic or a couple of hours filled by dry lessons.
    — Rick Kogan, chicagotribune.com, 23 Nov. 2020
  • Race never lurked too far below the surface of the polemics that ensued.
    — Erik Baker, Harpers Magazine, 18 June 2025
  • No, that doesn’t make Carrie’s story feel dated or read like a polemic.
    — Carol Memmott, Washington Post, 17 Aug. 2022
  • The usual art polemics of protests past will not work this time, on audience and target alike.
    — Christopher Borrelli, chicagotribune.com, 27 Apr. 2017
  • All three of the winning books deal explicitly with race, one of them in a mode of bitter polemic.
    — Meghan Cox Gurdon, WSJ, 31 Jan. 2020
  • This is not a story about women’s failures, or a polemic against their advancement.
    — Emma Green, The Atlantic, 19 Sep. 2016
  • Back across the Atlantic, the very nature of such polemic appears under threat.
    — Max Goldbart, Deadline, 19 Sep. 2025
  • But why make these points in a novel and not, say, a tract, journalistic report, or polemic?
    — Nathaniel Rich, The Atlantic, 11 May 2018
  • But in their polemics, these men are aligning themselves with the gerontocracy against the young.
    — Jeet Heer, New Republic, 9 Aug. 2017
  • The cheap and easy way to write a polemic is to attack the very worst people on the other side of your argument.
    — Dan McLaughlin, National Review, 14 June 2021
  • But amid today’s fierce polemics, even scholarly discussion of the term is fraught.
    — Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times, 22 Jan. 2024
  • Perhaps the thing that annoyed me about Dziebel's style is that the polemic is its shamelessness.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 31 July 2012
  • The goal isn’t to write polemics, but songs that will touch people and not immediately feel dated.
    — Washington Post, 1 Feb. 2020
  • The exhibition unfolds as a polemic, with dozens of artists pitted against each other.
    — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 22 Sep. 2022
  • Gertner, a journalist for the New York Times, does not wax polemic.
    — David Holahan, USA TODAY, 11 June 2019
  • Take, for example, The Nation of Plants, a polemic in the guise of a plea.
    — Megan Garber, The Atlantic, 20 Apr. 2021
  • Besides, polemics from both sides rarely address the complexities of the issue.
    — Marcos Bretón, sacbee, 3 Sep. 2017
  • Venice’s first day of charging a fee to enter the historic center went mostly smoothly, but there were some protests and polemics.
    — Adam Liptak Nicole Hong Michael Rothfeld Peter Baker, New York Times, 26 Apr. 2024
  • The Berlinale‘s public audiences were not deterred by the polemics in the background.
    — Melanie Goodfellow, Deadline, 24 Mar. 2026
  • Yet there follows no Sorkin-style polemic; rather, the show’s sympathies emerge through a sheer richness of detail.
    — Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, 25 Feb. 2021
  • The bad news is that Shriver’s affinity for the polemic has infected her fiction.
    — Mark Athitakis, Washington Post, 20 Sep. 2022
  • The people of Kenya are bucking a worldwide trend of antimigrant polemics and actions.
    — The Christian Science Monitor, Christian Science Monitor, 24 Apr. 2025
  • Yet the book remains instructive because, as with so many polemics, a flawed central premise hints at some important truths.
    — Hans Kundnani, Foreign Affairs, 24 Oct. 2023
  • But Gerwig’s screenplay is the farthest thing from a polemic against the oppressiveness of men.
    — John Matteson, The Atlantic, 1 Jan. 2020
  • Not since Manet’s Olympia has the exposure of a woman’s body incited such polemic.
    — Norman Jean Roy, Vogue, 14 Dec. 2016

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'polemic.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: