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Webster 1913 Edition

Noun.

One who carries on a controversy; a disputant.

He [Johnson] was both intellectually and morally of the stuff of which

controversialists

are made.

Macaulay.

Noun.

One who carries on a controversy; a disputant.

controversialist ‎(plural controversialists)

One who regularly engages in public controversies.
Richard Dawkins has become a leading controversialist in a few areas.
- John Worthington
  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.

one who regularly engages in public controversies