Spurious

3 definitions found

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

  Spurious \Spu"ri*ous\ (sp[=u]"r[i^]*[u^]s), a. [L. spurius.]
     1. Not proceeding from the true source, or from the source
        pretended; not genuine; counterfeit; false; adulterate.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. Not legitimate; bastard; as, spurious issue. "Her spurious


        firstborn." --Milton.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     {Spurious primary}, or {Spurious quill} (Zool.), the first,
        or outer, primary quill when rudimentary or much reduced
        in size, as in certain singing birds.
  
     {Spurious wing} (Zool.), the bastard wing, or alula.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     Syn: Counterfeit; false; adulterate; supposititious;
          fictitious; bastard.
          [1913 Webster] -- {Spu"ri*ous*ly}, adv. --
          {Spu"ri*ous*ness}, n.
          [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  spurious
       adj 1: plausible but false; "specious reasoning"; "the spurious
              inferences from obsolescent notions of causality"-
              Ethel Albert [syn: {specious}]
       2: born out of wedlock; "the dominions of both rulers passed
          away to their spurious or doubtful offspring"- E.A.Freeman
          [syn: {bastard}, {bastardly}, {misbegot}, {misbegotten}]
       3: intended to deceive; "a spurious work of art" [syn: {inauthentic},
           {unauthentic}]

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

  79 Moby Thesaurus words for "spurious":
     affected, apocryphal, artificial, assumed, baseborn, bastard,
     bogus, brummagem, colorable, colored, contrived, counterfeit,
     counterfeited, deceitful, distorted, dressed up, dummy,
     embellished, embroidered, ersatz, factitious, fake, faked, false,
     falsified, fatherless, feigned, fictitious, fictive, forged,
     fraudulent, garbled, hypocritical, illegitimate, imitation,
     inauthentic, junky, make-believe, man-made, meretricious,
     misbegotten, miscited, miscreated, misquoted, misreported,
     misstated, mock, natural, perverted, phony, pinchbeck, pretend,
     pretended, pseudo, put-on, quasi, queer, self-styled, sham, shoddy,
     simulated, snide, so-called, soi-disant, substitute,
     supposititious, synthetic, tin, tinsel, titivated, twisted,
     unauthentic, unauthoritative, unfounded, ungenuine, unnatural,
     unreal, unreliable, warped