CONTENTIOUS • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Contentious

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/kəntˈɛnʃəs/ Listen

adjective

Contentious adj.

Fond of contention; given to angry debate; provoking dispute or contention; quarrelsome. "Despotic and contentious temper."

Relating to contention or strife; involving or characterized by contention. "More cheerful, though not less contentious, regions."

(Law) Contested; litigated; litigious; having power to decide controversy.

Contentious jurisdiction (Eng. Eccl. Law), jurisdiction over matters in controversy between parties, in contradistinction to voluntary jurisdiction, or that exercised upon matters not opposed or controverted.

Synonyms: Quarrelsome; pugnacious; dissentious; wrangling; litigious; perverse; peevish.

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Etymology of 'Contentious'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Contentious" Quotes from Famous Books

... colonies, both in their ministry and civil administration, ... had lately made Acomenticus (a poor village) a corporation, and had made a taylor their mayor, and had entertained one Hull, an excommunicated person and very contentious, for their minister." Rhode Island, as a seat of separatism and heresy, was not invited and perhaps not even considered. For managing the affairs of the confederation, the main objects of which were friendship and ...

— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews

... various are the forms of civil politics, there is but one form of polity in the sciences; and that always has been and always will be popular. Now the doctrines which find most favour with the populace are those which are either contentious and pugnacious, or specious and empty; such, I say, as either entangle assent or tickle it. And therefore no doubt the greatest wits in each successive age have been forced out of their own course, men of capacity and intellect above ...

— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... had from the first an experienced leader in Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts. He had seen many years of service in the Continental Congress which he first entered in 1776. He was a delegate to the Philadelphia convention, in whose sessions he showed a contentious temper, and in the end refused to subscribe to the new Constitution. In the convention debates he had strongly declared himself "against letting the heads of the departments, particularly of finance, have anything to do with business ...

— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford

... looketh upon all things in reference to herself; striveth and argueth for self; but Grace bringeth back all things to God from whom they came at the beginning; ascribeth no good to herself nor arrogantly presumeth; is not contentious, nor preferreth her own opinion to others, but in every sense and understanding submitteth herself to the Eternal ...

— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis

... Bond as apparently his most dangerous enemy and scowling at him with great hostility, "if you want to let the religious life of this place, nearly dead already, pass right away, choose a man like Forsyth. But I don't wish to be contentious; there's been contention enough in this place during these last months, and I'm sick and ashamed of the share I've had in it. I won't say more than this—that if you want an honest, God-fearing man here, who lives only for God and is in his most ...

— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

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