Polemic

Research

A strongly argued attack on or defence of a position, typically without conceding ground to opposing views; polemics drive debate and expose hidden assumptions, but should be distinguished from balanced scholarly argument, which weighs evidence on more than one side.

Sources

1. Merriam-Webster — polemic merriam-webster.com accessed 17 September 2026

Merriam-Webster defines the noun as “an aggressive attack on or refutation of the opinions or principles of another”, or “the art or practice of disputation or controversy”, and also as “an aggressive controversialist: disputant” — the person as well as the piece. The etymology is blunt: through French polémique from Greek polemikos, warlike or hostile, from polemos, war. First recorded 1626. Calling a piece of writing a polemic is therefore a description of its posture, not automatically a criticism of its argument.

Merriam-Webster is cited here as the dictionary of record. Where a lexicon entry defines a word rather than a position, a dictionary is the primary source for it — there is no other body with standing over what a word means. The reading of how the term is used in research writing, above, is this lexicon’s own.

Related terms

• Abbreviation
• Abstract
• Abstraction
• Academic Database
• Analysis
• Annotation

Rewritten from a truncated AJG archive entry, August 2026.