captious

/ˈkæpʃəs/

captious adjective: that captures; especially, (of an argument, words etc.) designed to capture or entrap in misleading arguments; sophistical.

Adjective

captious (comparative more captious, superlative most captious)

(obsolete) That captures; especially, (of an argument, words etc.) designed to capture or entrap in misleading arguments; sophistical.
- […]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[…]1605, William Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well, act I, scene i, page 234
- A captious queſtion, Sir, and your’s is one,
  Deſerves an anſwer ſimilar, or none.1786, William Cowper, “Tirocinium: Or, A Review of Schools”, in Poems, 2nd edition, volume II, London: J. Johnson, page 338
Synonyms:

tricky, thorny, sophistical
Having a disposition to find fault unreasonably or to raise petty objections; cavilling, nitpicky.
- ...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,...1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter LI, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 23
- 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.1968, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, translated by Sidney Monas, Crime and Punishment, published 1866
Synonyms:

carping, critical, faultfinding, hypercritical, nitpicky

captious meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Vietnamese

captious in Urdu

نقطہ چین

captious in Bengali

ত্রুটি খুঁজে বেড়ায়, আপত্তিকারী

captious in Malayalam

fault-finding, critical, quibbling: വൃഥാ ആക്ഷേപിക്കുന്ന, കുറ്റം പറയുന്ന, കുറ്റം കാണുന്ന, ദോഷദൃഷ്ടി, കുറ്റം കണ്ടുപിടിക്കുന്ന, വിമർശിക്കുന്ന

captious in Vietnamese

that captures misleadingly: nguỵ biện
having a disposition to find fault unreasonably or to raise petty objections: hay bắt bẻ

Examples of captious in a sentence

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?1815 March 24, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “To William Lisle Bowles”, in Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Oxford, published 2000...
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.2009 January 24, Anne Karpf, The Guardian:

Synonyms of captious

All synonyms of captious

Forms of captious

comparative	more captious
superlative	most captious

Origin of captious

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

Words formed from captious

Questions about captious

What does captious mean?: Captious means that captures; especially, (of an argument, words etc.) designed to capture or entrap in misleading arguments; sophistical.
What is captious in Urdu?: Captious in Urdu is نقطہ چین. See Captious meaning in Urdu.
How do you use captious in a sentence?: 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?
What part of speech is captious?: Captious is an adjective.
How do you pronounce captious?: Captious is pronounced /ˈkæpʃəs/.

Words near captious in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: captious (page history and authors); captious (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); captious (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); captious (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-captious.wav.

Cite this entry: “captious.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/captious. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.