captious
Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary
Contents |
[edit] English
[edit] Etymology
From Middle English capcious, from Latin captiosus, possibly via Middle French captieux
[edit] Adjective
captious (comparative more captious, superlative most captious)
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Positive |
Comparative |
Superlative |
- Having a disposition to find fault unreasonably or to raise petty objections.
- 1968, Sidney Monas translating Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866):
- But Peter Petrovich did not accept this retort. On the contrary, he became all the more captious and irritable, as though he were just hitting his stride.
- 1968, Sidney Monas translating Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866):
- (obsolete, literary) Intended to capture or entrap.
- 1598, William Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well:
- I know I love in vain, strive against hope
- Yet in this captious and intenible sieve
- I still pour in the waters of my love
- 1784, William Cowper, "A Review of Schools", in Poems by William Cowper, 1859 ed., page 219:
- A captious question, Sir (and yours is one)
- Deserves an answer similar, or none
- 1815 March 24, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “To William Lisle Bowles”, in Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 2000 Oxford ed., ISBN 0198187459, page 558:
- Were you aware that in your discourse last Sunday you attributed the captious Problem of the Sadducees to the Pharisees, as a proof of the obscure and sensual doctrines of the latter?
- 1598, William Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well:
[edit] Translations
[edit] Synonyms
- (disposed to find fault): faultfinding, nitpicky, carping, critical, hypercritical
- (tending to capture or entrap): tricky, thorny; sophistical
