Word.ws English Dictionary

speciosity

/ˌspiːʃiˈɒsɪti/

speciosity noun: the state or quality of being specious; speciousness.

Noun (1)

speciosity (countable and uncountable, plural speciosities)

  1. (uncountable) The state or quality of being specious; speciousness.
  2. (countable, in plural, rare) A specious action, promise, ideology, etc.
    • Till deep misery, if nothing softer will, have driven you out of your Speciosites into your Sincerities; and you find there either is a Godlike in the world, or else ye are an unintelligible madness;1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “ch. 8, The Electon”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book II (The Ancient Monk)

Noun (2)

speciosity (uncountable)

  1. The state or quality of being speciose.
    • The circumstance that the proportion of taxa with 12 + 14 vertebrae increased in the lower categories is due to the speciosity of the Epinephelinae.1960 December 30, Carl L[eavitt] Hubbs, “Fauna Japonica/Serranidae (Pisces). By Masao Katayama. […] Fauna Japonica/Cottidae (Pisces). By Masao Watanabe. […]”, in Copeia, number 4, Philadelphia, Pa....
    • [David] Jablonski’s end-Cretaceous mollusc genera suffer extinction to an equal degree, irrespective of their speciosity, geographical spread or other extinctionproof insurance policies.1988 December 15, Henry Gee, Rory Hewlett, “Palaeontology: Helping with inquiries”, in John Maddox, editor, Nature, volume 336, number 6200, London: Nature Publishing Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 617...

Forms of speciosity

pluralspeciosities

Origin of speciosity

From Middle English speciouste (“attractiveness”), from Latin speciōsitās (“beauty”), from speciēs (“appearance”). By surface analysis, speci(ous) + -osity.

From speciose + -ity; see -osity.

Words that rhyme with speciosity

6 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about speciosity

What does speciosity mean?
Speciosity means the state or quality of being specious; speciousness.
What part of speech is speciosity?
Speciosity is a noun.
How do you pronounce speciosity?
Speciosity is pronounced /ˌspiːʃiˈɒsɪti/.
What is the plural of speciosity?
The plural of speciosity is speciosities.

Words near speciosity in the dictionary

  1. speciogynine
  2. speciology
  3. speciophylline
  4. speciose
  5. speciosities
  6. speciosity
  7. specious
  8. specious present
  9. speciously
  10. speciousness
  11. speciousnesses

Source and license

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