The story of "tendentious" starts with a German theological brouhaha. 

The guy to blame for it is Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860). He was a theologian famous for critiquing the Bible from a historical perspective, arguing that the Bible's New Testament shows "conflicting tendencies" among the factions of people who assembled it.

Baur's scholarship drew its own criticism. Some folks were highly annoyed by his tendency to shoehorn the facts into his own arguments. Because those arguments were so biased, German scholars labeled them Tendenziöse, "biased reports" (from the Latin tendere, "to stretch").

This Tendenziöse was translated as "tendential" into English discussions of Baur around the year 1847, and around 1900 or so it morphed into "tendentious," a more natural-sounding English version.  

So, today, when you call something tendentious, you mean it's biased in a way that twists the facts to fit a certain purpose.

Part of speech:

Adjective: "a tendentious interpretation;" "Their whole documentary is tendentious."

Other forms: 

The adverb is "tendentiously." 

And the noun is "tendentiousness."

how to use it:

Pick the critical, scholarly, semi-common word "tendentious" when you want to complain about the inappropriateness of someone's blatant bias.

You might talk about tendentious arguments, articles, books, documentaries, explanations, interpretations, etc.

examples:

"Back last Thursday the New York Times ran one of those tendentious pieces about how awful WalMart is." 
— Tim Worstall, Forbes, 23 June 2014

"The Rijksmuseum exhibition is structured around pairings of Spanish and Dutch pictures, only a few of which, in truth, feel other than glib and tendentious."
— Sebastian Smee, Washington Post, 8 November 2019

has this page helped you understand "tendentious"?

Awesome, I'm glad it helped!

Thanks for letting me know!
If you have any questions about this word, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.

study it:

Explain the meaning of "tendentious" without saying "partial" or "shoehorning."

try it out:

In the Washington Post, Michael Dirda wrote that "all autobiographical works are secretly tendentious." Memoirs of any kind, he says, "quietly [adjust] history to fit a certain hypothesis or to justify a life."

Talk about what he means, and whether or not you agree. You might point to some examples of autobiographical articles, books, TED talks, or films that you'd say are tendentious or not tendentious.

If you like, use this space to write. (To save your work, copy and paste it into an email or a document.)

before you review, play:

Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.

Our game for this month is the Game of Venery! 

Longtime readers may recognize this game from 2019, when we played with terms from James Lipton's book An Exaltation of Larks. This time, we’ll play with terms from Daniel E. Meyers's online Collective Noun Catalog.

To play, check out the two templates below, and have fun filling them in and sharing your inventions with your family. You can be as lofty, silly, or bawdy as you like. To see the way the terms actually appear in Meyers’s catalog, scroll to the bottom of the issue.

Try these today:

1. a cachet of _____

2. a/an _____ of pots and pans

review this word:

1. The opposite of TENDENTIOUS is

A. SAFE.
B. CORRECT.
C. OBJECTIVE.

2. If a _____ is extremely tendentious, you might even call it _____.

A. situation .. a Scylla and Charybdis: a set of twin dangers
B. year .. an annus mirabilis: a remarkable, wonderful year
C. text .. an eisegesis: an explanation or interpretation that is far too influenced by that person's own ideas

Answers to the review questions: 1. C 2. C Answers to the game questions: Your invented terms of venery can be anything you like! Here are the ones from the catalog: 1. a cachet of jewels 2. a tintinnabulation of pots and pans And here are mine: 1. a cachet of pocket watches 2. a disarray of pots and pans

a final word:

I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love. I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words. From my blog: On vocabulary...       36 ways to study words.       Why we forget words, & how to remember them.       How to use sophisticated words without being awkward. On writing...       How to improve any sentence.       How to motivate our kids to write.       How to stop procrastinating and start writing.       How to bulk up your writing when you have to meet a word count. From my heart: a profound thanks to the generous patrons, donors, and sponsors that make it possible for me to write these emails. If you'd like to be a patron or a donor, please click here. If you'd like to be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com. A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.