Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Marked by a disposition to find and point out trivial faults: a captious scholar.
- adj. Intended to entrap or confuse, as in an argument: a captious question.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- 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.
- Proceeding from a faultfinding or caviling disposition; fitted to harass or perplex; censorious; carping; hence, insidious; crafty: as, a captious question.
- Capable of receiving; capacious.
- Insnaring; captivating.
- 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
- adj. obsolete That captures; especially, (of an argument, words etc.) designed to capture or entrap in misleading arguments; sophistical.
- adj. Having a disposition to find fault unreasonably or to raise petty objections; cavilling, nitpicky
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Apt to catch at faults; disposed to find fault or to cavil; eager to object; difficult to please.
- adj. Fitted to harass, perplex, or insnare; insidious; troublesome.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. tending to find and call attention to faults
Etymologies
- Middle English capcious, from Middle French captieux, or its source, Latin captiōsus, from captiōnem. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English capcious, from Old French captieux, from Latin captiōsus, from captiō, seizure, sophism, from captus, past participle of capere, to seize. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Well, my lord, I don't think I could be called captious for saying that the world has not gone over well with me.”
“Those interchanges have ranged from the thoughtful interplay of ideas and differing points of view, to the captious arguments of those whose only apparent mission in life is to dismiss anything or anyone pointing a way forward.”
The Huffington Post: Russell Bishop: What We Need Are A Few Good Cynics
“The authorities were quietly allowing others to occupy similar parcels—chiefly dam worker families whom Young judged “quiet, good people” and whose occupancy “we have informally suffered ... in order not to be oppressive, unreasonable, or captious in our treatment of good citizens.””
“While the three young people kept a conversation going, Varian wondered, as she set the sled on its baseward course, just what happened to occasion Dimenon's captious attitude.”
“Maybe it's the long, boring haul back from swine flu that's making me captious - see earlier post - but I am afraid that Sam Mendes is going to have get an e-kicking today.”
“And he wasn't sure about how a Marx Brothers movie could resolve existential anxiety so fully, but seemed too captious to mention.”
“But maybe that's because Greg Sargent's question is based on a captious and stingy premise.”
“You guys (in the comment thread) are hopelessly captious and stingy.”
“I find it outrageous to raise such captious discussions under the current circumstances.”
Earthquake Warning Was Removed From Internet - The Lede Blog - NYTimes.com
“Patrick was completely enamored of the new science of forensics, and kept his department absolutely up to date on all advances made in that captious discipline, with its blood types, serums, hairs, fibers, anything that a criminal might leave behind as a signature.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘captious’.
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GRE Barron's 800
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abject, abjure, abscission, abscond, abstemious, abstinence, abysmal, accretion and 787 more...
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SAT 2
platitude, parsimonious, perspicacious, catharsis, captious, munificent, penurious, arid, portentous, ossified, nascent, perfidy and 13 more...
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2nd part
prelude, ample, escalate, prototype, accession, acquisition, archives, zealot, indict, verdict, intimidating, timid and 454 more...
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SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
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From reading
Collected from reading
venerate, reprobate, reticent, adoration, ethereal, ephemeral, equivocal, contumacious, heinous, solicitous, agnostic, aberration and 335 more...
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phrontistery - c
from phrontistery.info
czardas, cytometer, cytology, cytheromania, cystoscope, cystolith, cyrenaic, cypseline, cyprinoid, cyphonism, cynophobia, cytogenesis and 1298 more...
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Tristram Shandy
souse, meet, sententious, propound, boot, casuistry, avoirdupois, akimbo, disport, lenity, succussation, sweetbread and 155 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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GRE
predilection, explicit, appeal, supplication, appealing, enchanting, ovation, pertinent, apropos, opportunely, applicable, germane and 381 more...
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cicatrix
scar tissue
minatory, naira, Cluniac, embracive, prolix, hierophant, timorous, adduce, veracious, dysphoric, sang-froid, vitiate and 503 more...
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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 567 more...
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New Words
Words I want to add to my working vocabulary.
picayune, elision, intimated, modicum, non sequitur, insouciant, vituperate, asperity, perfidious, gainsay, fulmination, inimical and 11 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6689 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1824 more...
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SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
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All The Words
I enjoy collecting words, for I have no fear of them ever running out.
tatterdemalion, panopticon, idioglossia, hypnagogue, hypnopomp, defenestration, anacoluthon, scofflaw, affront, edifying, palimpsest, naufrage and 475 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for captious.

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