SPECIOUS • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Specious

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/spˈiʃəs/ Listen

adjective

Specious adj.

Presenting a pleasing appearance; pleasing in form or look; showy. "Some (serpents) specious and beautiful to the eye." "The rest, far greater part, Will deem in outward rites and specious forms Religion satisfied."

Apparently right; superficially fair, just, or correct, but not so in reality; appearing well at first view; plausible; as, specious reasoning; a specious argument. "Misled for a moment by the specious names of religion, liberty, and property." "In consequence of their greater command of specious expression."

Synonyms: Plausible; showy; ostensible; colorable; feasible. See Plausible.

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Etymology of 'Specious'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Specious" Quotes from Famous Books

... object to the practice of the hunters, who make it their chief business to slaughter as many deer in a camping season as they can. Their own rule, they say, is to kill a deer only when they need venison to eat. Their excuse is specious. What right have these sophists to put themselves into a desert place, out of the reach of provisions, and then ground a right to slay deer on their own improvidence? If it is necessary for these people to have anything to eat, which I doubt, it is ...

— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... of the evils resulting to the Church from divisions and discords in doctrine is evident from the facts. Many are deceived; the masses immediately respond to new doctrine brilliantly presented in specious words by presumptuous individuals thirsting for fame. More than that, many weak but well-meaning ones fall to doubting, uncertain where to stand or with whom to hold. Consequently men reject and blaspheme the Christian doctrine and seek occasion to ...

— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... exploits of the spirit of conquest, the most impassioned efforts of the spirit of armed propagandism; we have seen territories and states molded and re-molded, unmade, re-made, and unmade again, at the pleasure of combinations more or less specious. What survives of all these violent and arbitrary works? They have fallen, like plants without roots, or edifices without foundation. And now, when analogous enterprises are attempted, scarcely have they made a few steps ...

— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... now his genuine colours wear, That specious False-One, by whose cruel wiles I lost thy amity; saw thy dear smiles Eclips'd; those smiles, that us'd my heart to cheer, Wak'd by thy grateful sense of many a year When rose thy youth, by Friendship's pleasing toils Cultur'd;—but DYING!—O! for ever fade The angry ...

— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... at least one of them says, really believed there could be no true beauty without bigness, that thought certainly is most specious in regard to architecture; and the thirteenth-century church of Amiens is one of the three or four largest buildings in the world, out of all proportion to any Greek building, both in that and in the multitude of its external sculpture. The chapels of the nave are embellished ...

— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

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