Controversial

//ˌkɒn.tɹəˈvɜː.ʃəl// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Someone or something (such as a matter or an argument) that is controversial. archaic

    "No fundamental doctrine was omitted. Controversials were carefully avoided. Whether any blessing attended these attempts, will be known at the last day."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Arousing or likely to arouse controversy.

    "Whole libraries of controversial books."

  2. 2
    Engaging in or given to controversy; disputatious, argumentative.
Adjective
  1. 1
    marked by or capable of arousing controversy wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
contentiousdebatablepolemicalarguableargumentalargumentative

Example

More examples

"He was criticized for voicing such a controversial opinion."

Etymology

From Latin contrōversiālis, from contrōversia + -ālis. By surface analysis, controversy + -al.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.