It's Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 23rd.
Today's word is polemic, spelled P-O-L-E-M-I-C.
Polemic is a noun.
A polemic is a strong written or spoken attack against someone else's opinions,
beliefs, or practices.
Here's the word used in a sentence from The Age of Revolutions by Nathan Pearl Rosenthal.
That winter of 1774-75 could be considered the nadir of the entire American patriot movement.
After the closing of the First Continental Congress,
North Americans turned upon one another as never before.
The colonists had never had a single view of Britain or how to respond to the measures it was trying to impose on the American colonies.
Strong polemics against further resistance to the British government spouted from printing presses across the colonies.
Diatribe, Jeremiah, Philippic.
The English language sure has a lot of formal words for the things we say or write when we are,
to use a decidedly less formal term, Big Mad.
We will refrain from going on a tirade about it, however,
especially since it's good to have options with subtle differences in tone and meaning.
polemic, which traces back ultimately to the Greek word for war, polemos,
is the word you want to refer specifically to an aggressive attack on someone's ideas or principles.
Someone who is cheesed off because they don't like cheese,
for example, would write a polemic about it,