Definition of "disputation"

disputation

/dɪsˌpjuːˈteɪʃən/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural disputations
1. The act of disputing; a dispute or argument.
  Quotations
  And like the battles fought over baptism by sprinkling as opposed to total immersion, these modern-day disputations can be tedious.
  1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, page 13
2. A rhetorical exercise in which parties reason in opposition to each other over a belief or proposition.