Controversialist

Richard Dawkins has become a leading controversialist in a few areas.

His indefatigable adversary, who is the perfect model of an agile controversialist, had attacked him as a magniloquent Thraso, on account of his Pansophical promises.

Does this explain the sensational character of some of his public pronouncements? A controversialist might drive through some of the later chapters with a coach and four without encountering serious impediments; but sono ben trovati, and he is a hold man who would presume to pass final judgment upon the contemporary phase of Italy’s history.

He was not a drunkard, not a chronic bankrupt. For the rest, Mr. Woodward depicts [Thomas] Paine as a highminded controversialist, persecuted by reactionaries on both sides of the Atlantic for no more than liberal political views.

In the early 1700s [Jonathan] Swift spent much of his time in London, where he wormed his way into the company of coffee-house wits and politicians, and, beginning to publish political tracts, won a reputation as a controversialist.

This was to have been the final date of the rightwing controversialist’s charmingly named Dangerous Faggot Tour of US campuses.