tendentious

English

WOTD – 19 February 2016

Etymology

From tendency +‎ -ious, after German tendenziös.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /tɛnˈdɛnʃəs/

  • Audio (Southern England):

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• Audio (US):

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Adjective

tendentious (comparative more tendentious, superlative most tendentious)

1. (of persons or their words) Having a tendency, written or spoken, with a partisan, biased or prejudiced purpose, especially a controversial one; implicitly or explicitly slanted; biased.

   Antonyms: objective, impartial, unbiased; fair, balanced

   Near-synonyms: partisan, slanted, partial, prejudiced

   That he was a supporter of the cause was clear, because his reports from the front were tendentious.

   • 2016 November 23, Karen Tumulty, “Trump backs away from some of his strident campaign promises”, in The Washington Post‎:

     President-elect Donald Trump abruptly abandoned some of his most tendentious campaign promises Tuesday, saying he does not plan to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email system or the dealings of her family foundation, has an “open mind” about a climate-change accord from which he vowed to withdraw the United States and is no longer certain that torturing terrorism suspects is a good idea.

   • 2021 November 17, Anthony Lambert, “How do we grow the leisure market?”, in RAIL, number 944, page 37:

     It is a canard trotted out by lazy or tendentious journalists that nationalised British Railways lacked entrepreneurial flair.

Derived terms

• tendentiously
• tendentiousness

Related terms

• tendency

Translations

tendentious

Afrikaans: tendensieus Arabic: مُغْرِض (muḡriḍ) Armenian: please add this translation if you can Bulgarian: тенденцио́зен (tendenciózen), пристрастен (bg) (pristrasten) Catalan: tendenciós Chinese: Mandarin: 偏頗的 / 偏颇的, 有偏見的 / 有偏见的, 傾向性的 / 倾向性的 Danish: tendentiøs, tendensiøs Dutch: tendentieus (nl) Finnish: tarkoitusperäinen French: tendancieux (fr) Georgian: ტენდენციური (ṭendenciuri) German: tendenziös (de) Italian: tendenzioso (it) Japanese: 偏向した (henkou shita), 偏向的な (henkouteki na), 傾向的な (keikouteki na) Korean: 편향된 (pyeonhyangdoen) Norwegian: Bokmål: tendensiøs, tendentiøs Nynorsk: tendensiøs, tendentiøs Polish: tendencyjny (pl) Portuguese: tendencioso (pt) Russian: тенденцио́зный (ru) (tɛndɛncióznyj) Serbo-Croatian: tȅndenciōzan (sh) Slovene: tendenciọ̑zen Spanish: tendencioso (es) Swedish: tendentiös (sv), tendensiös

References

• “tendentious”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.