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Saturday December 19, 2009

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tendentious [ten-DEN-shuhs]

adjective

1. Marked by a strong tendency especially a controversial one (bias, point of view or purpose); a tendentious novel.

• "If one thing is clear from the stimulus debate," he wrote earlier this year, "it's that the two parties have utterly different economic doctrines." Krugman went on to describe the different views in his typically tendentious manner.
  Jonah Goldberg, "Making peace: Winner take all on health care", Chicago Tribune, Nov 26, 2009
• While one certainly reads "Neverland" compulsively -- if only with a sense of what one might call "the fascination of the abomination" -- Piers Dudgeon's book is nonetheless highly problematic. Much is speculative and the evidence circumstantial at best. One senses throughout a tendentious author with a thesis, a hobbyhorse that he rides hard, right into the ground.
  Michael Dirda, "Was the man behind 'Pan' a monster?", The Washington Post, Oct 29, 2009
• They were stoned because of this competitive need engrained in the human psyche to survive as long as one could and to pass one's genetic codes to the next generation. The tendentious rationalist further theorized that if one were to live in a remote rural town he or she would not make compatability an issue.
  Steven Sills An American writer. Tokyo to Tijuana: Gabriele Departing America (2004)

Origin of the Word

Tendentious, approximately 1628, derives from Medieval Latin tendentia "inclination, leaning," from Latin tendens, present participle of tendere "to stretch, aim."