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contentious
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show 62 more with this conextual meaning
  • Josie had been contentious for a week now, ever since the fiasco at Lacy's house.†   (source)
  • The event was often informal, contentious and unruly.†   (source)
  • They are a contentious race, in constant discord with one another, and when they have civil wars Earth's surface is thrown off-kilter.†   (source)
  • In order to raise the money for it he would have to be able to offer something novel, some new discovery or cure, in a field that is already crowded and also very contentious.†   (source)
  • He pointed directly to the contentious blond girl in back with the cell phone.†   (source)
  • Their relationship was sometimes contentious.†   (source)
  • The clans have ever been contentious; what pleases one infuriates another.†   (source)
  • It was as though the sirens heralded the presence of some cont rolling mechanism—a thing we would do well not to provoke with our contentiousness and spilled food.†   (source)
  • They talked about other, less contentious things and by the time they said good-bye they were friends again, though he didn't tell her he loved her.†   (source)
  • Larry Wakeford stares in silence at the blonde, butch-cut, mischievously cocked head of a student-a delightfully contentious senior named Leslie-and notices a ray of late afternoon sunlight reflecting off her nostril stud.†   (source)
  • Their voices rose in a roar like a crashing avalanche; most of them had gathered into contentious, shouting groups—the dais was deserted, the map of Idris hanging forlornly behind it.†   (source)
  • This trial is one of courtesy, not contentious deliberation.†   (source)
  • THE AMERICAN League Championship was so hotly contentious that year, I could barely stand to watch the games.†   (source)
  • From now on, when President Kennedy wants a contentious point made to his cabinet or advisers, he will rely on Bobby, who will then speak for the president and endure any subsequent criticism or argument so as not to weaken his big brother.†   (source)
  • He "abhorred dispute," as he said, shrank from the contentiousness of politics, and instinctively avoided confrontation of any kind.†   (source)
  • The purpose of the assignment is to instill a degree of contentiousness on the part of the one driving the car.†   (source)
  • In the second, the apartment was his home, and he was lounging on the sofa, laughing uproariously as Charlie, for my benefit, reminisced about those contentious dinner-table lessons in American idioms.†   (source)
  • I said, "It looks then as though the natural contentiousness of people has died.†   (source)
  • Don't pay no 'tention to Lula, she's contentious because Reverend Sykes threatened to church her.   (source)
    contentious = argumentative
  • "Samuel," she said, "you're the most contentious man this world has ever seen."   (source)
  • It is a central and contentious element of the book.
  • An old man, afflicted with a family of contentious Sons, brought in a bundle of sticks and asked the young men to break it.   (source)
  • And Liza said with her dreadful simplicity, "You're already pushed by your own contentiousness.†   (source)
  • A round of haggling ensued, at the end of which Rasheed said to Aziza contentiously, as if it were she who'd haggled him, "Give it back.†   (source)
  • FOR ABIGAIL AND JOHN it was the long-dreamed-of chance to enjoy life together again, as husband and wife in a world at peace, and removed from the contentiousness and stress of politics at home, that made the time in France an interlude such as they had never known.†   (source)
  • My visit had been awkward, tense, even contentious.†   (source)
  • The mood of the city had become extremely contentious.†   (source)
  • You've taken a contentious game and made an answer of it.†   (source)
  • "He's a sweet husband," she said aloud, "but contentious.†   (source)
  • Liza says I am contentious, but now I'm caught in a web of my children—and I think I like it.†   (source)
  • We found to our surprise that our preschool audience didn't like it when the adult cast got into a contentious discussion," he remembers.†   (source)
  • And you've got at least fifty gill-netters out in the fog last night—any one of them as contentious as the next when he figures some other guy is cutting into his fish—and then you've got Ole Jurgensen.†   (source)
  • Nor did it help that they were in evident awe of him, for he could find no way of using his influence to smooth relations among the contentious magicians.†   (source)
  • I suspect that Judge Norton had scheduled the final Rule 32 hearing in part because he wanted to get this contentious, complicated case off his docket and out of his court.†   (source)
  • With his guards in tow, Eragon struck out in a random direction, allowing his feet to carry him where they would while he pondered methods of welding the dwarves' contentious factions into a whole united against Galbatorix.†   (source)
  • Choosing the next leader of Durgrimst Ingeitum was a contentious business-we were hard at it for over a week-but in the end, most of the families agreed that I should follow in Hrothgar's footsteps and inherit his position since I was his only named heir.†   (source)
  • It was a bolt out of the blue, catching everyone by surprise, and the event that was to make the already difficult business of founding the new American government still more complicated and contentious.†   (source)
  • "Contentious," said Samuel.†   (source)
  • "How different?" he inquired, solemnly and contentiously, taking up a glass and drinking from it.†   (source)
  • "Now, Ben, he was a Roman—let me tell," said Letty, using her elbow contentiously.†   (source)
  • They carried everything to extremes, these two, as was probably necessary for the sake of argument, and squabbled fiercely over the most extreme choices, whereas it seemed to him that what one might, in a spirit of conciliation, declare truly human or humane had to lie somewhere in the middle of this intolerant contentiousness, somewhere between rhetorical humanism and illiterate barbarism.†   (source)
  • To have understood it correctly, the full measure and obstinacy and sullen contentiousness that had suddenly generated, one would have had to return to Kansas City and the period in which he had been so futilely dancing attendance upon Hortense Briggs.†   (source)
  • But because of the sheer contentiousness and determination of his nature, he would not permit himself to be completely baffled by this smashing announcement Instead he turned, and after surveying the flustered and yet self-chastising Belknap and Clyde, commented: "I don't believe it He's lying, I think, or bluffing.†   (source)
  • —Communist pamphlet (5) If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul.†   (source)
  • His tone was gloomy and foreboding—more contentious and bitter than at any time ever between them.†   (source)
  • I do not make funniness about humanitarianism as I used to; sometimes now I t'ink the vulgar and contentious human race may yet have as much grace and good taste as the cats.†   (source)
  • The pair were speeding away into the distant gray by the time that the contentious revellers became aware of what had happened.†   (source)
  • "No, no, no," replied this individual, who was blond and vigorous and by nature a little irritable and contentious.†   (source)
  • She was very hurt and sad and contentious and Roberta could see for herself that there was no way out of this trying situation other than to move.†   (source)
  • His countenance had, perhaps for years, become so set in its contentious expression that it did not soften, even now when he was quiet.†   (source)
  • "Well!" said Stryver, slapping the desk with his contentious hand, opening his eyes wider, and taking a long breath, "if I understand you, Mr. Lorry, I'll be hanged!"†   (source)
  • Women who are never bitter and resentful are often the most querulous; and if Solomon was as wise as he is reputed to be, I feel sure that when he compared a contentious woman to a continual dropping on a very rainy day, he had not a vixen in his eye—a fury with long nails, acrid and selfish.†   (source)
  • "Never you trouble your head about this man," retorted the contentious Mr. Cruncher; "you'll have trouble enough with giving your attention to that gentleman.†   (source)
  • A very contentious gentleman, who said it was his mission to be everybody's brother but who appeared to be on terms of coolness with the whole of his large family, completed the party.†   (source)
  • I wish to represent myself to her through you, because she has a great esteem and respect for her cousin John; and I know you will soften the course I take, even though you disapprove of it; and— and in short," said Richard, who had been hesitating through these words, "I—I don't like to represent myself in this litigious, contentious, doubting character to a confiding girl like Ada," I told him that he was more like himself in those latter words than in anything he had said yet.†   (source)
  • the contentious waves   (source)
    contentious = causing difficulty
  • this contentious storm   (source)
    contentious = argumentative or likely to cause disagreement
  • It's a noncontentious sort of meat.†   (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "non-" in noncontentious means not and reverses the meaning of contentious. This is the same pattern you see in words like nonfat, nonfiction, and nonprofit.
  • Adieu dear comrade,
    Your mission is fulfill'd—but I, more warlike,
    Myself and this contentious soul of mine,
    Still on our own campaigning bound,
    Through untried roads with ambushes opponents lined,
    Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis, often baffled,
    Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out—aye here,
    To fiercer, weightier battles give expression.†   (source)
  • 21:19 It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and an angry woman.†   (source)
  • 27:15 A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike.†   (source)
  • 26:21 As coals are to burning coals, and wood to fire; so is a contentious man to kindle strife.†   (source)
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