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

To make a subject of dispute, contention, litigation, or emulation; to contend for; to call in question; to controvert; to oppose; to dispute. The people . . . contested not what was done. Locke. Few philosophical aphorisms have been more frequenty repeated, few more contested than this. J. D. Morell.…

One who contests; an opponent; a litigant; a disputant; one who claims that which has been awarded to another.

The act of contesting; emulation; rivalry; strife; dispute. "Loverlike contestation." Milton. After years spent in domestic, unsociable contestations, she found means to withdraw. Clarendon.

To dispute; to controvert. [Obs.] "Controversed causes." Hooker.

A disputant. [Obs.]

Relating to, or consisting of, controversy; disputatious; polemical; as, controversial divinity. Whole libraries of controversial books. Macaulay.

One who carries on a controversy; a disputant. He [Johnson] was both intellectually and morally of the stuff of which controversialists are made. Macaulay.

Contention; dispute; debate; discussion; agitation of contrary opinions. This left no room for controversy about the title. Locke. A dispute is commonly oral, and a controversy in writing. Johnson.

To make matter of controversy; to dispute or oppose by reasoning; to contend against in words or writings; to contest; to debate. Some controverted points had decided according to the sense of the best jurists. Macaulay.

Capable of being controverted; disputable; admitting of question. -- Con`tro*ver"ti*bly, adv.

Inability to express one's self; stiffness. [Obs.] A reverend disputant of the same costiveness in public elocution with myself. Wakefield.

eve on slight evidence. That implict credulity is the mark of a feeble mind will not be disputed. Sir W. Hamilton.

Hale. It is a kind of taking God's name in vain to debase religion with such frivolous disputes. Hooker. And to debase the sons, exalts the sires. Pope.

Liable to be debated; disputable; subject to controversy or contention; open to question or dispute; as, a debatable question. The Debatable Land or Ground, a tract of land between the Esk and the Sark, claimed by both England and Scotland; the Batable Ground.

To contend for in words or arguments; to strive to maintain by reasoning; to dispute; to contest; to discuss; to argue for and against. A wise council . . . that did debate this business. Shak. Debate thy cause with thy neighbor himself. Prov. xxv. 9.

One who debates; one given to argument; a disputant; a controvertist. Debate where leisure serves with dull debaters. Shak.

In a decided manner; indisputably; clearly; thoroughly.

determination, as of a question or doubt; settlement; conclusion. The decision of some dispute. Atterbury.

To have a difference, cause of variance, or quarrel; to dispute; to contend. We 'll never differ with a crowded pit. Rowe.