controversialist

From controversial +‎ -ist.

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controversialist (plural controversialists)

1. One who regularly engages in public controversies.

   Richard Dawkins has become a leading controversialist in a few areas.

   • 1847–1886, James Crossley, editor, The Diary and Correspondence of Dr. John Worthington, notes:

     His indefatigable adversary, who is the perfect model of an agile controversialist, had attacked him as a magniloquent Thraso, on account of his Pansophical promises.

   • 1926 May, Victor S. Clark, “The Life of Benito Mussolini”, in The Atlantic‎^[1], →ISSN:

     Does this explain the sensational character of some of his public pronouncements? A controversialist might drive through some of the later chapters with a coach and four without encountering serious impediments; but sono ben trovati, and he is a hold man who would presume to pass final judgment upon the contemporary phase of Italy’s history.

   • 1945 September, Charles W. Morton, “Tom Paine: America's God Father”, in The Atlantic‎^[2], →ISSN:

     He was not a drunkard, not a chronic bankrupt. For the rest, Mr. Woodward depicts [Thomas] Paine as a highminded controversialist, persecuted by reactionaries on both sides of the Atlantic for no more than liberal political views.

   • 2003, Roy Porter, chapter 9, in Flesh in the Age of Reason, Allen Lane, →ISBN, page 149:

     In the early 1700s [Jonathan] Swift spent much of his time in London, where he wormed his way into the company of coffee-house wits and politicians, and, beginning to publish political tracts, won a reputation as a controversialist.

   • 2017 February 6, Matthew d’Ancona, “There must be free speech, even for Milo Yiannopoulos”, in The Guardian‎^[3], →ISSN:

     This was to have been the final date of the rightwing controversialist’s charmingly named Dangerous Faggot Tour of US campuses.