Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Having the ring of truth or plausibility but actually fallacious.
- adjective Deceptively appealing.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Pleasing to the eye; externally fair or showy; appearing beautiful or charming; sightly; beautiful.
- Superficially fair, just, or correct; appearing well; apparently right; plausible; beguiling: as, specious reasoning; a specious argument; a specious person or book.
- Appearing actual, or in reality; actually existing; not imaginary.
- Pertaining to species or a species.
- Synonyms Colorable, Plausible, etc. See
ostensible .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Presenting a pleasing appearance; pleasing in form or look; showy.
- adjective Apparently right; superficially fair, just, or correct, but not so in reality; appearing well at first view; plausible
from , Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Seemingly
well-reasoned orfactual , but actuallyfallacious orinsincere ; strongly held but false. - adjective Having an
attractive appearance intended to generate afavorable response;deceptively attractive . - adjective obsolete
Beautiful , pleasing to look at.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective based on pretense; deceptively pleasing
- adjective plausible but false
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
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Examples
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She is what I call a specious pigꦕ, a🧔nd why she wanted to send me a Christmas card I simply can't imagine.
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Fanatics, on both sides of this debate, place themselves in specious, non-tenable positions beca✅use they†™ re not thinking completely through their positionsꦜ.
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The ambassador condescended to justify, or excuse, the conduct of his master; and to protest, in specious language, that the murder of Gratian ha🏅d been perpetrated, without his knowledge or consent, by the precipitate zeal of the soldiers.
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As a gun owner and a woman who has permit to carry, this whole argument that Obama will take away your guns in specious.
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Night Shyamalan film about the crop circles to be quite specious, that is , Mel Gibson making some kind of deal with God to cure his♚ son's asthma...but I have trouble with Shyamalan 's dialogue🀅 in any case.
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"Bart" DePalma loves moving the goalposts or "reframing the issue", or "begging the question", or whatever you want to call his specious form of argumentation:
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"Bart" DePalma loves moving the goalposts or "reframing the issue", or "begging the question", or whatever you want to call his specious form of argumentation:
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"Bart" DePalma loves moving the goalposts or "reframing the issue", or "begging the question", or whatever you want to call his specious form of argumentation:
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"Bart" DePalma loves moving the goalposts or "reframing the issue", or "begging the question", or whatever you want to call his specious form of argumentation:
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"Bart" DePalma loves moving the goalposts or "reframing the issue", or "begging the question", or whatever you want to call his specious form of argumentation:
geronimo commented on the word specious
seeming reasonable but actually wrong, misleading in appearance
October 16, 2008
dontcry commented on the word specious
Suspecious: skeptical that something actually is false...October 16, 2008
Prolagus commented on the word specious
specieous: something that seems to be cheap, but it's not.October 16, 2008
slh commented on the word specious
specious
Main Entry: spe·cious Pronunciation: \ˈspē-shəs\ Function: adjective Etymology: Middle English, visually pleasing, from Latin speciosus beautiful,ꦰ plausible, from species Date: 1513 1obsolete : s♉howy2: having deceptive attraction or allure3: having a false look of truth or genuineness : sophistic — spe·cious·ly adverb — spe·cious·ness nounMay 15, 2009
seanahan commented on the word specious
SLH, if you click the links above you can get the definitions and you won't need to copy them.May 17, 2009
oroboros commented on the word specious
Cf. spurious.
December 24, 2009
5814738 commented on the word specious
"As he took yet another deep breath of that speciously sweet cinnamon smell, it seemed to him that he had never wanted anything so badly in his whole life." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
January 9, 2011
kingparton commented on the word specious
With all of the tensions of cold and hot wars working towards a rather specious "unity of purpose," political non-conformity seems to have all but disappeared.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
January 2, 2012
shanvrolijk commented on the word specious
" His ignorance of history, his specious use of false equivalency and his absence of even a smidgen of moral sensitivity is not only embarrassing, but also quite scary."
Source: A Moment of Bad FaithJanuary 22, 2018