Adjacent Words

Captious definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

CAPTIOUS, a.
1. Disposed to find fault, or raise objections; apt to cavil, as in popular language, it is said, apt to catch at; as a captious man.
2. Fitted to catch or ensnare; insidious; as a captious question.
3. Proceeding from a caviling disposition; as a captious objection or criticism.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: tending to find and call attention to faults; "a captious pedant"; "an excessively demanding and faultfinding tutor" [syn: captious, faultfinding]

Merriam Webster's

adjective Etymology: Middle English capcious, from Middle French or Latin; Middle French captieux, from Latin captiosus, from captio deception, verbal quibble, from capere to take — more at heave Date: 14th century 1. marked by an often ill-natured inclination to stress faults and raise objections <captious critics> 2. calculated to confuse, entrap, or entangle in argument <a captious question> Synonyms: see critical • captiously adverb • captiousness noun

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. given to finding fault or raising petty objections. Derivatives: captiously adv. captiousness n. Etymology: ME f. OF captieux or L captiosus (as CAPTION)

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Captious Cap"tious, a. [F. captieux, L. captiosus. See Caption.] 1. 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. 2. 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.

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. 1. Censorious, cavilling, carping, hypercritical, disposed to cavil, given to fault-finding. 2. Crabbed, snappish, testy, touchy, waspish, splenetic, cross, snarling, acrimonious, cantankerous (colloq.), contentious. 3. Ensnaring, insidious.

Moby Thesaurus

bickering, carping, caviling, censorious, choplogic, contrary, critic, critical, cynical, demanding, equivocatory, evasive, exacting, faultfinding, finicky, hairsplitting, hedging, hypercritical, irritable, logic-chopping, nagging, niggling, nit-picking, overcritical, paltering, particular, peevish, pernickety, perverse, pettifogging, petty, petulant, picayune, pussyfooting, quibbling, shuffling, snappish, snappy, testy, trichoschistic, trifling, trivial, ultracritical