Crossword clues for captious
captious
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Captious \Cap"tious\, a. [F. captieux, L. captiosus. See Caption.]
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Apt to catch at faults; disposed to find fault or to cavil; eager to object; difficult to please.
A captious and suspicious age.
--Stillingfleet.I am sensible I have not disposed my materials to abide the test of a captious controversy.
--Bwike. -
Fitted to harass, perplex, or insnare; insidious; troublesome.
Captious restraints on navigation.
--Bancroft.Syn: Caviling, carping, fault-finding; censorious; hypercritical; peevish, fretful; perverse; troublesome.
Usage: Captious, caviling, Carping. A captious person is one who has a fault-finding habit or manner, or is disposed to catch at faults, errors, etc., with quarrelsome intent; a caviling person is disposed to raise objections on frivolous grounds; carping implies that one is given to ill-natured, persistent, or unreasonable fault-finding, or picking up of the words or actions of others.
Caviling is the carping of argument, carping the caviling of ill temper.
--C. J. Smith.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
c.1400, capcyus, from Middle French captieux (15c.) or directly from Latin captiosus "fallacious," from captionem (nominative captio) "a deceiving, fallacious argument," literally "a taking (in)," from captus, past participle of capere "to take, catch" (see capable). Related: Captiously; captiousness.
Wiktionary
a. (context obsolete English) That captures; especially, (of an argument, words etc.) designed to capture or entrap in misleading arguments; sophistical.
WordNet
adj. tending to find and call attention to faults; "a captious pedant"; "an excessively demanding and faultfinding tutor" [syn: faultfinding]
Usage examples of "captious".
In the house of lords, the earl of Nottingham, who had now associated himself with the whigs, inveighed against the preliminaries as captious and insufficient, and offered a clause to be inserted in the address of thanks, representing to her majesty that, in the opinion of the house, no peace could be safe or honourable to Great Britain or Europe, if Spain and the West Indies should be allotted to any branch of the house of Bourbon.
When we ask the captious question as to which of two people walking in opposite directions the sun would prefer to follow, the child is taken aback and shows how new the question is to him.
I speedily tired of Quadratus' captious arguments, and of those scraps of wisdom ineptly borrowed from the writings of our philosophers.
It is not without good reason, then, that not merely a few people prating in the schools and gymnasia in captious disputations, but so many and great people, both learned and unlearned, in countries and cities, have believed that God spoke to them or by them, i.
The consciousness of having done amiss, had exposed her to a thousand inquietudes, and made her captious and irritable to a degree that must have been-- that had been--hard for him to bear.
The consciousness of having done amiss, had exposed her to a thousand inquietudes, and made her captious and irritable to a degree that must have been-- that had been-- hard for him to bear.