Controversial

How to spell controversial

13 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce controversial

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does controversial mean?

1. adjectiveGiving rise to public disagreement, debate, or strong opposing opinions.

Controversial in a sentence

• The council's controversial decision to close the library sparked weeks of protest.

• The referee made a controversial call that both teams disputed for hours.

Where does controversial come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin controversia, meaning 'a dispute' or 'a quarrel', which was itself built from controversus, literally 'turned against'. That form joins contra, meaning 'against', with the past participle of vertere, meaning 'to turn', so the underlying image is of two parties turned to face one another in argument. English took it in through Old French and Latin during the late 1300s and 1400s, first as the noun 'controversy' and then as the adjective 'controversial' by the 1580s. The same vertere root for 'turning' still spins quietly inside many familiar words such as 'reverse', 'convert', and 'version'. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: writers often want to add a second 'r' or write '-versal', when the correct sequence is 'contro' followed by 'versial'.

How the word is built

• contro- (against, from contra)
• vers (turn, from vertere)
• -ial (adjective suffix)