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語源

From Middle English capcious, from Middle French captieux, or its source, Latin captiōsus, from captiō.

発音

• IPA^(key): /ˈkæpʃəs/

形容詞

captious (comparative more captious, superlative most captious)

1. (obsolete) That captures; especially, (of an argument, words etc.) designed to capture or entrap in misleading arguments; sophistical.
   • 1605, William Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well, Act I, scene i, page 234:

     […] I know I loue in vaine, ſtriue againſt hope : / Yet in this captious, and intemible Siue / I ſtill poure in the waters of my loue / And lacke not to looſe ſtill […]

   • 1786, William Cowper, “Tirocinium: Or, A Review of Schools”, in Poems‎^[1], volume II, 2nd edition, London: J. Johnson, page 338:

     A captious queſtion, Sir, and your’s 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. edition, →ISBN, 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?

   Synonyms: tricky, thorny, sophistical

2. Having a disposition to find fault unreasonably or to raise petty objections; cavilling, nitpicky.
   • 1842, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Lady Anne Granard, volume 3, page 23:

     ...not an irritable word had escaped him; and as every captious conclusion and petulant observation had been in days past always attributed, very justly, by Isabella either to the dyspepsia, brought on by his grief for Margarita, or the fever he sustained from the climate,...

   • 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.

   • 2009, Anne Karpf, The Guardian, 24 Jan 2009:

     The "Our Bold" column, nitpicking at errors in other periodicals, can look merely captious, and its critics often seem to be wildly and collectively wrong-headed.

   Synonyms: carping, critical, faultfinding, hypercritical, nitpicky

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