captiously


Also found in: Thesaurus, Legal.

cap·tious

 (kăp′shəs)
adj.
1. Marked by a disposition to find and point out trivial faults: a captious scholar.
2. Intended to entrap or confuse, as in an argument: a captious question.
[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.]
cap′tious·ly adv.
cap′tious·ness n.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Adv.1.captiously - in a captious, carping manner; "he was captiously pedantic"
Mentioned in ?
References in classic literature ?
We are not boy and girl, to be captiously irritable, misled by every moment's inadvertence, and wantonly playing with our own happiness." And yet, a few minutes afterwards, she felt as if their being in company with each other, under their present circumstances, could only be exposing them to inadvertencies and misconstructions of the most mischievous kind.
View in context
Featherstone, captiously. "She was for reading when she sat with me.
View in context
Genovese, in his turn, argues that the concepts of "participatory democracy" and "equity", repeatedly invoked by crits as opposed to the liberal order, remain captiously uncertain (33).
The Neoliberalism and the Crisis of Critical Legal Studies/ O neoliberalismo e a crise dos Critical Legal Studies

Dictionary browser ?
Full browser ?