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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Marked by a disposition to find and point out trivial faults: a captious scholar.
  2. adj. Intended to entrap or confuse, as in an argument: a captious question.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Apt to notice and make much of unimportant faults or defects; disposed to find fault or raise objections; prone to cavil; difficult to please; faultfinding; touchy: as, a captious man.
  2. Proceeding from a faultfinding or caviling disposition; fitted to harass or perplex; censorious; carping; hence, insidious; crafty: as, a captious question.
  3. Capable of receiving; capacious.
  4. Insnaring; captivating.
  5. Synonyms Captious, Carping, Caviling, faultfinding, hypercritical, crabbed, testy, pettish, splenetic, all express unamiable temper and behavior, with wrongheadedness. Captious expresses a disposition to catch at little or inoffensive things, and magnify them into great defects, affronts, etc. Carping is a strong word noting faultfinding that is both unreasonable and unceasing; it applies more to criticism on conduct, while caviling applies to objections to arguments, opinions, and the like: as, it is easier to cavil than to disprove. See petulant.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. Having a disposition to find fault unreasonably or to raise petty objections.
  2. adj. Intended to capture or entrap.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Apt to catch at faults; disposed to find fault or to cavil; eager to object; difficult to please.
  2. adj. Fitted to harass, perplex, or insnare; insidious; troublesome.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. tending to find and call attention to faults

Etymologies

  1. Middle English capcious, from Old French captieux, from Latin captiōsus, from captiō, seizure, sophism, from captus, past participle of capere, to seize; see kap- in Indo-European roots.

Examples

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Lists

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Comments

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  • cxkang Dictionary.com defines as

    1. apt to notice and make much of trivial faults or defects; faultfinding; difficult to please.
    2. proceeding from a faultfinding or caviling disposition: He could never praise without adding a captious remark.
    3. apt or designed to ensnare or perplex, esp. in argument: captious questions.

    I thought it meant you're full of shit, full of excuses but I was wrong Apr 22, 2009

  • knitandpurl "They made a great pet of the creature—naturally, it was called Fiddle. Though it remained bad-tempered, captious, and unfriendly, it never went short of food."
    -- Diana Wynne Jones, Charmed Life, in The Chronicles of Chrestomanci (p 16) Jan 29, 2008

  • logophile "He grew by degrees less civil, put on more of the Master, frequently found fault, was captious and seem'd ready for an Out-breaking." - Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of B.F. (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 110. Oct 21, 2007

  • rolig "… our amour propre is so excessively sensitive, and so captious, that it is almost impossible that one word said about us in our absence, if it is faithfully reported to us, should not seem to us unworthy or hardly worthy of us, and not sting us." – Giacomo Leopardi, Thoughts, tr. J. G. Nichols (London: Hesperus, 2002), p. 33 (#41). Jun 4, 2007

‘captious’ has been looked up 2982 times, loved by 21 people, added to 104 lists, commented on 4 times, and has a Scrabble score of 12.