Captious

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  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.
        [1913 Webster]
  


              A captious and suspicious age.        --Stillingfleet.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              I am sensible I have not disposed my materials to
              abide the test of a captious controversy. --Bwike.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. Fitted to harass, perplex, or insnare; insidious;
        troublesome.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              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.
            [1913 Webster]
  
                  Caviling is the carping of argument, carping the
                  caviling of ill temper.           --C. J. Smith.
            [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

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

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  43 Moby Thesaurus words for "captious":
     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