Word.ws English Dictionary

captiousness

captiousness noun: the state of being captious.

Noun

captiousness (usually uncountable, plural captiousnesses)

  1. (usually) The state of being captious.
    • "Yes— and I suppose you want to know why," she replied with dry captiousness.1867, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, chapter V, in The Gambler, translated by C. J. Hogarth^(https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Gambler_(1867)/V)
  2. (usually) Captious behaviour.

Forms of captiousness

pluralcaptiousnesses

Origin of captiousness

From captious + -ness.

Questions about captiousness

What does captiousness mean?
Captiousness means the state of being captious.
What part of speech is captiousness?
Captiousness is a noun.
What is the plural of captiousness?
The plural of captiousness is captiousnesses.

Words near captiousness in the dictionary

  1. captionless
  2. captionlessness
  3. captions
  4. captious
  5. captiously
  6. captiousness
  7. captiousnesses
  8. captivance
  9. captivances
  10. captivate
  11. captivated

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: captiousness (page history and authors). 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.

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