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<font color="#000066">Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 25, 2024 is:</font>
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<strong>tendentious</strong> • \ten-DEN-shus\ • <em>adjective</em><br />
<p><em>Tendentious</em> is a formal word used disapprovingly to describe someone or something expressing a strongly biased point of view in a way that may cause argument.</p>
<p>// The book proved to be a <em>tendentious</em> account of the town's history, written to rescue the reputation of one of its less scrupulous founders.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tendentious">See the entry ></a></p>
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<strong>Examples:</strong><br />
<p>“Polls can have their own politics, and media polls are often accused of being <em>tendentious</em>.” — Joseph Epstein, <em>The Wall Street Journal</em>, 26 Oct. 2021</p>
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<strong>Did you know?</strong><br />
<p><em>Tendentious</em> 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 <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/predispose"><em>predisposed</em></a> or prone to favor <a href="https://bit.ly/4a1jvzw"><em>partisan</em></a>, but whatever your leanings, we’re inclined to think you’ll benefit from adding <em>tendentious</em> to your repertoire. <em>Tendentious</em> 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 <em>tendenti-</em> (from <em>tendentia</em>, meaning “tendency”) and combined it with the familiar adjective suffix <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/-ious"><em>-ious</em></a> 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.</p>
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Examples:
“Polls can have their own politics, and media polls are often accused of being tendentious.” — Joseph Epstein, The Wall Street Journal, 26 Oct. 2021
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](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/predispose) or prone to favor [partisan](https://bit.ly/4a1jvzw), 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](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/-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.](https://us-central1-podcastguru-217d6.cloudfunctions.net/gcf_get_image?image_url=https://merriam-webster.com/assets/mw/static/wod-rss-images/wotd_podcast_logo_2.jpg&width=300&height=300&api_key=xqFmUFX5BHLBTA){kind=logo}