Definition of TENDENTIOUS (original) (raw)
disapproving
: marked by a tendency in favor of a particular point of view : biased
Radio and television in South Africa are effectively state-owned. … News reporting is selective and tendentious, customarily presenting only the government's view of events, and attacking or ignoring its opponents.—
William Finnegan
YouTube-style montages and mash-ups have been an excellent tool for seeing and showing how rhetoric takes shape. Of course, these videos can themselves be polemical, and people use them to advance all kinds of tendentious theories.—Virginia Heffernan
Did you know?
Tendentious is one of several words English speakers can choose when they want to suggest that someone has made up their mind in advance. You may be partial to predisposed or prone to favor partisan, but whatever your leanings, we’re inclined to think you’ll benefit from adding tendentious to your repertoire. Tendentious is a relatively recent arrival to English, considering its Latin roots. In the latter half of the 19th century, English users took the Latinate stem tendenti- (from tendentia, meaning “tendency”) and combined it with the familiar adjective suffix -ious to form a word describing someone with a tendency to favor a particular point of view, motivated by an intent to promote a particular cause.
Examples of tendentious in a Sentence
He made some extremely tendentious remarks.
Recent Examples on the Web
These examples are automatically compiled from online sources to illustrate current usage. Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
At their worst, the postwar social problem films were tendentious, preachy, and puffed up with their own virtuous motives. —Thomas Doherty, The Hollywood Reporter, 9 Aug. 2024 Critical race theory is a prime example of this blight, as are the equally tendentious teachings of intersectionality. —Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government, 9 Jan. 2024 The memorial also mentions several Jewish victims of Arab robberies and 13 Jews who were killed in British bombing raids on Palestine during World War I. Palestinian historiography and commemorative culture rely on a similarly tendentious use of history. —Tom Segev, Foreign Affairs, 23 Apr. 2024 Critics, again mostly Republicans, weighed in again with tendentious lectures on social media about the moral imperative of meeting one’s obligation to pay back a loan. —Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 16 Apr. 2024 See all Example Sentences for tendentious 
Word History
Etymology
tendenti- (taken as Latinate stem of tendency) + -ous, probably after German tendenziös
First Known Use
1874, in the meaning defined above
Time Traveler
The first known use of tendentious was in 1874
Dictionary Entries Near tendentious
Cite this Entry
“Tendentious.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tendentious. Accessed 19 Nov. 2024.
Share
More from Merriam-Webster on tendentious
Last Updated: 23 Sep 2024 - Definition revised
Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!