Captious

Definition: Captious

Captious

Adjective

1. Tending to find and call attention to faults; "a captious pedant"; "an excessively demanding and faultfinding tutor".

Date "captious" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1350. (references)

Etymology: Captious \Cap"tious\, adjective. [French expression captieux, from Latin expression captiosus. See Caption.]. (Websters 1913)

Domain	Definitions
Literature	Captious Fallacious, deceitful; now it means ill-tempered, carping. (Latin, captiosus.) "I know I love in vain, strive against hope; Yet in this captious and intenible sieve I still pour in the waters of my love." Shakespeare: All's Well that Ends Well, i. 3. Source: Brewer's Dictionary.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Synonym: Captious

Synonym: faultfinding (adj). (additional references)

Context	Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus).
Caprice	Adjective: capricious; erratic, eccentric, fitful, hysterical; full of whims; Noun: maggoty; inconsistent, fanciful, fantastic, whimsical, crotchety, kinky, particular, humorsome, freakish, skittish, wanton, wayward; contrary; captious; arbitrary; unconformable; penny wise and pound foolish; fickle; (irresolute); frivolous, sleeveless, giddy, volatile.
Disapprobation	Satirical, sarcastic, sardonic, cynical, dry, sharp, cutting, biting, severe, withering, trenchant, hard upon; censorious, critical, captious, carping, hypercritical; fastidious; sparing of praise, grudging praise.
Irascibility	Querulous, captious, moodish; quarrelsome, contentious, disputatious; pugnacious; (bellicose); cantankerous, exceptious; restiff; (perverse) a; churlish; (discourteous).
Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus.

Crosswords: Captious

English words defined with "captious": captiously, Captiousness ♦ Exceptious ♦ faultfinding, Findfaulting, Fribbling ♦ Hypercritic ♦ Nasute ♦ Tettish ♦ Umbratious. (references)

Etymologies containing "captious": Exceptious ♦ Findfaulting. (references)

"Captious" is generally used as an adjective (general or positive) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Captious" is used about 7 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Adjective (general or positive)	100%	7	133,076

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Language		Translations for "captious"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Albanian		mistrec (flip, mischief, wicked), grindavec (arguer, cantankerous, caviller, contentious, crab, crank, croaker, disputant, fractious, fretful, ill tempered, noisy person, peevish, pettish, quarrelsome, spitfire, wrangler). (various references)

Arabic		‏عياب (cynic, cynical, faultfinding), ‏صعب إرضاؤه, ‏إرباكي, ‏أحبولي مربك. (various references)

Bulgarian		заядлив (argumentative, bellicose, carping, combative, contradictious, contradictory, currish, doggish, mordant, nagging, peevish, provoking, spleenful, troublesome, vixenish), придирчив (carping, choosey, dainty, delicate, exacting, exceptive, fastidious, finical, finicking, finicky, finikin, nice, particular, pernickety, queasy, squeamish). (various references)

Chinese		吹毛求疵 (Fastidious). (various references)

Czech		záludný (insidious, shifty, sneaky). (various references)

Farsi		فریبنده (Attractive, Deceptive, Glamorous, Sophisticate, Tempter, Witch), وسیع (Abroad, Ample, Comprehensive, Extensive, Immense, Large, Roomy, Spacious, Vast, Wide), حیله گر (Crafty, Janusfaced, Shifty, Shrewd, Trepanation), عیب جو (Censorious), ایرادگیر (Prig). (various references)

French		chicanier (carping), vétilleux. (various references)

German		spitzfindig (acute, astute, captiously, hairsplitting, nit-picking, over-nice, overprecise, oversubtle, quibbling, shrewd, subtle, wiredrawn). (various references)

Greek		στριμμένοσ (churlish, crabbed, crotchety, cussed, squiggly, surly), φιλοκατήγοροσ (nagger), δύστροποσ (bloody minded, cantankerous, crabbed, cranky, cross, fretful, grouch, illtempered, morose, peevish, pettish, recalcitrant, shrewish, splenetic, splenish, sullen, surly, testy, untoward, vixenish, waspish, wayward). (various references)

Hebrew		� וק�"ן (meticulous, pedant, pedantic). (various references)

Hungarian		gáncsoskodó (critical, fault finding, vituperative), akadékoskodó (martinetish, martinettish, nagging, niggling, pedantic, to be interfering). (various references)

Italian		capzioso, sofistico, meticoloso (carping, correct, fastidious, finickly, fussy, meticulous, nagging, particular, pedantic, punctilious, scrupulous). (various references)

Korean		헐뜯�". (various references)

Manx		granganagh (cantankerous, cattish, catty, churlish, crabbed, crabbed of person, crabby, cross, cross annoyed, cynical, disagreeable, fractious, fretful, grumpy, ill-humoured, ill-natured, ill-tempered, niggly person, peevish, snappy). (various references)

Pig Latin		aptiouscay

Portuguese		capcioso (carping, catchy, specious), insidioso (carping, guileful, insidious), implicante (implicate), ardiloso (artful, astute, clever, cunning, elusive, guileful, leery, sly, smart). (various references)

Romanian		certãreţ (brawler, cantankerous, discordant, eristic, factious, frumpish, peevish, pugnacious, quarrelsome, snappy), penibil (painful, tough, uncomfortable), pedant (academic, academical, bookish, censorious, dryasdust, far fetched, inkhorn, milliner, opinioned, pedant, pedantic, pernickety, precise, precisian, prig, priggish, priggishly, prissy, prolix, punctilious, scholastic), insidios (insidious, insidiously, insinuating), greu de mulţumit (difficult, fastidious, nice, particular, pernickety, qualmish, squeamish), dificil (abstract, awkward, choosy, cross-grained, dainty, delicate, difficult, fastidious, finical, hard, ill, intractable, involved, nice, parlous, qualmish, scabrous, spiny, stiff, tender, thorny, ticklish, tough, troublesome, unyielding), delicat (dainty, delicate, delicately, fine, fine-spun, finicky, fragile, frail, fussy, gentle, gentlemanlike, gently, mellow, nice, queasy, refined, slender, slim, slippery, soft, subdued, tactful, tender, thin, ticklish, tricky, weak). (various references)

Russian		придирчивый (cantankerous, carping, contentious, exceptive, hypercritical, overcritcal, pernickety, persnickety, quarrelsome, snappish). (various references)

Serbo-Croatian		zanovetljiv, lukav (arch, artful, astute, cagey, cagy, canny, crafty, cunning, designing, insidious, leery, perfidious, shrewd, sleeky, sly, tricky, vulpine, wily). (various references)

Spanish		capcioso. (various references)

Swedish		småaktig (mean, pettifogging, quibbling). (various references)

Turkish		yanıltıcı (colorable, elusory, fallacious, illusive, illusory, misleading, perversive, specious, token), kusur bulan, kılı kırk yaran (choosy, finical, finicking, finicky, hairsplitting, meticulous, pettifogging, prissy, quibbling, wiredrawn), ince eleyip sık dokuyan (picky), boş (airy, barren, blank, bootless, chimerical, desert, disengaged, empty, expressionless, fallacious, flat, for hire, free, frivolous, frothy, futile, gaseous, hollow, idle, inane, ineffective, ineffectual, invalid, leisure, meaningless, nugatory, null, pointless, puerile, punk, purposeless, spare, tenantless, thin, trumpery, unbuilt, unbuilt-on, unengaged, unfounded, unoccupied, unprofitable, unrecorded, unwritten-on, vacant, vacuous, vain, void, waste, windy, wishywashy, without any foundation, without foundation, yeasty), asılsız (baseless, chimerical, delusive, footless, groundless, ill founded, insubstantial, out of whole cloth, rootless, tinsel, unfounded, ungrounded, untruthful, without any foundation, without foundation). (various references)

Ukranian		каверзний (catchy), обманливий (catchy, deceitful, deceptive, delusive, delusory, elusory, fallacious, misleading), облудний (affected, counterfeit, deceitful, fraudulent, illusive, put on), причепливий (cantankerous, carping, catching, catchy, censorious, fault finding, fuddy-duddy, hypercritical, notional, pernickety, persnickety, snappish, snorty), двозачний. (various references)

Vietnamese		xảo trá (crafty, cunning, treacherous, trickish), tính xoi mói (captiousness), hay bắt lỗi. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

Derivations
	Words beginning with "captious": captiously, captiousness, captiousnesses. (additional references)
Misspellings
	"Captious" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: apthous, caitious, capatious, capious, capitious, caprious, captaux, captius, captivus, catious, cutious, Scaphiopus. (additional references)
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

Words rhyming with "captious" (pronounced 'Cap"tious'): Ablatitious, Abstentious, Abstractitious, Addititious, Adjectitious, Adoptious, Adscititious, Adventitious, Ambitious, Arreptitious, Ascititious, Ascriptitious, Bumptious, Cautious, Cementitious, Cineritious, Collatitious, Combustious, Commentitious, Compunctious, Conceptious, Concupiscentious, Connutritious, Conscientious, Contentious, Deceptious, Defectious, Deglutitious, Deletitious, Detractious, Direptitious, Disputatious, Dissentious, Distractious, Emissitious, Exceptious, Exemptitious, Expeditious, Extortious, Facetious, Factious, Factitious, Fictious, flagitious, fractious, Impropitious, incautious, Inimicitious, Innutritious, Inventious. (additional references)

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Direct Anagrams: autopsic.
	Words within the letters "a-c-i-o-p-s-t-u"
	-1 letter: psoatic, upcoast, utopias.
	-2 letters: atopic, catsup, coapts, coatis, coitus, optics, patios, patois, picots, scotia, topics, upcast, utopia.
	-3 letters: ascot, aspic, autos, capos, caput, coapt, coast, coati, coats, costa, coups, cutis, ictus, iotas, optic, ostia, pacts, patio, picas, picot, pious, pisco, pitas, posit, pouts, psoai, scaup, scout, scuta, situp, spait, spica, spout, sputa, stoai.
	Words containing the letters "a-c-i-o-p-s-t-u"
	+2 letters: captiously, patchoulis, supraoptic.
	+3 letters: copulations, copulatives, curatorship, cuspidation, duplicators, occupations, patchoulies, peculations, precautions, punctations, speculation, spiculation, subtropical.
	+4 letters: captiousness, coauthorship, computations, cupellations, curatorships, cuspidations, duplications, exculpations, inculpations, pectinaceous, pertinacious, plutocracies, postsurgical, postulancies, procurations, publications, punctuations, purificators, speculations, spiculations, stupefaction, supplication, supplicatory, transpicuous.
	+5 letters: autocephalies, capitulations, coauthorships, compurgations, conceptualise, conceptualism, conceptualist, contrapuntist, custodianship, encapsulation, haruspication, hypercautious, inoperculates, paramountcies, pococurantism, posttraumatic, propaedeutics, prosecutorial, protactiniums, proteinaceous, purifications, putrefactions, recuperations, reoccupations, stupefactions, supercautious, superromantic, supplications, unimportances, unsymptomatic.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.