captious

Meaningsophistical, critical

Common meaning: excessively eager to find fault

Journey through time

  1. Latincaptiosus‘sophistical, critical’source
  2. Frenchmeaning shiftssophistical, critical → fault-findingcaptieux‘fault-finding’source
  3. Englishmeaning shiftsfault-finding → excessively eager to find faultcaptious‘excessively eager to find fault’ · today

Sources & notes

Meaning: “Meaning” is the sense that emerges from the word’s roots; “Common meaning” is today’s everyday sense. Both written by us.

Pronunciation

  • UK IPA: not available. Respelling: generated.
  • US IPA: not available. Respelling: generated.

Origin: Built on Latin captiosus ‘sophistical, critical’.

Roots

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