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]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
captious
adj : tending to find and call attention to faults; "a captious
pedant"; "an excessively demanding and faultfinding
tutor" [syn: faultfinding]
WordNet (r) 2.0
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
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
faultfinding
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