captious

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The thing is done and cannot be altered; and what is said often ought not to be said because it is captious, and what is not said ought as often to be said because it is material.

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Definitions (9)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

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

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Examples (50)

  • Hence they all say that the State Department is merely captious, and they pay less and less attention to it and care less and less for American opinion—if only they can continue to get munitions. —  The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II
  • However captious or confident a critic may be, even the lightest reading of the critical past shows that the mountains of one day may be molehills to another. —  PoetryFoundation.org
  • The failure to recognize the social claim as legitimate causes the trouble; the suspicion constantly remains that woman's public efforts are merely selfish and captious, and are not directed to the general good. —  Democracy and Social Ethics
  • Seldom can penetration and courage in thinking hold their own against the miscellaneous habits of discourse; and nobody remembers that moral values must remain captious, and imaginative life ignoble and dark, so long as the whole basis and application of them is falsely conceived. —  The Life of Reason
  • 3. A cross, captious, and contradictive spirit and conduct, delighting in opposition to the judgment of the church and her rulers. —  The Divine Right of Church Government by Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
 

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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  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.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from French captieux = Provencal capcios = Spanish Portuguese capcioso = Italian capzioso, from Latin captiosus, deceptive, fallacious, sophistical, from captio(n-), deception, fallacy, sophism: see caption. In def. 3 associated with capacious or capable, in the orig. sense ‘taking’: see capacious.
 

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/ˈkæpʃəs/
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