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How To Use Captious In A Sentence

  • And therefore, least by over-long consuetude, something should take life, which might be converted to a bad construction, and by our country demourance for so many dayes, some captious conceit may wrest out an ill imagination; I am of the minde (if yours be the like) seeing each of us hath had the honor, which now remaineth still on me: that it is very fitting for us, to returne thither from whence we came. The Decameron
  • I've not "accused" you of captiousness, I've merely noticed that when it comes to Pope Benedict and the post-Vatican II magisterium of Holy Mother Church, you ARE captious. The truth of Europe's roots
  • He was captious with his sisters "whiles," she acknowledged in secret; he was arbitrary with his little brothers when they neglected tasks of his giving; and tried his mother and his grandmother, now and then, as young lads always have, and always will try their mothers and grandmothers, until old heads can be put on young shoulders. David Fleming's Forgiveness
  • The book exhibits some of the more unpleasant characteristics of the forensic approach: captious logic-chopping and a tone of arrogant pomposity.
  • a captious pedant
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  • Through his pen, inanity became animate, and the captious craft of caricature was raised to character study.
  • It is true that this sense of _captious_ may not have an exact parallel; but the intention of Shakspeare is very evident: _captious_ means, as Malone says, capable of _taking_ or _receiving_; and _intenible_ Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc
  • Then was seen the unprecedented sight of a party agent challenging the votes on his own side with a captiousness that his opponents would have hesitated to display.
  • Captious eye is not evildoing actually, although consume the pleasure after via often can affecting us.
  • “Yes — and I suppose you want to know why,” she replied with dry captiousness. The Gambler
  • I should withdraw my captious comments.
  • I. iii.208 (31,9) [captious and intenible sieve] The word _captious_ I never found in this sense; yet I cannot tell what to substitute, unless _carious, _ for _rotten_, which yet is a word more likely to have been mistaken by the copyers than used by the author. Notes to Shakespeare — Volume 01: Comedies
  • Though it remained bad-tempered, captious, and unfriendly, it never went short of food. CHARMED LIFE
  • This article is not prompted by any mere spirit of captiousness on my part.
  • I was struck by the sudden transition from the touching sensibility with which she had just been speaking to me to this petty reckoning and captiousness. Childhood
  • So she thrusts the burden of her sins upon other people's shoulders, and travels the first stage to captious and disappointed old-maidism. Aurora Floyd. A Novel
  • 'Well, my lord, I don't think I could be called captious for saying that the world has not gone over well with me.' Lord Kilgobbin
  • At the risk of sounding captious, one must observe that a 4,000-year-old drawing or painting of a cat that resembles a cat living today does not prove paternity or direct descent.
  • By now his hostile rhetoric has carried him beyond the self-discipline of consistency, and he becomes merely quarrelsome and captious.
  • The authorities were quietly allowing others to occupy similar parcels—chiefly dam worker families whom Young judged “quiet, good people” and whose occupancy “we have informally suffered ... in order not to be oppressive, unreasonable, or captious in our treatment of good citizens.” Colossus
  • Finally, mention should be made of the author's logical arguments, and his clear and interesting style: satisfying the highest professional demands, this book contains no dry scholarly captiousness.
  • The McIlhennys bump along the well-trodden tourist path, she captious, he grouchy.
  • By way of a protest against the captiousness to which their agents were subjected, the Polish authorities on August 2 prohibited the importation of this firm's products into Polish territory.
  • he was captiously pedantic
  • -- While captiousness of manner, and the habit of disputing and contradicting every thing said, is chilling and repulsive, the opposite habit of assenting to, and sympathizing with, every statement made, or emotion expressed, is almost equally disagreeable. Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners A Complete Sexual Science and a Guide to Purity and Physical Manhood, Advice To Maiden, Wife, And Mother, Love, Courtship, And Marriage
  • A critic, and not necessarily a captious one, might argue that this title is in that no-man's-land in which paradox verges on contradiction.
  • While the three young people kept a conversation going, Varian wondered, as she set the sled on its baseward course, just what happened to occasion Dimenon's captious attitude. Cattle Town
  • Dress, it seemed to me, was all she cared for; and there was a captiousness and ill-temper about her, at times, that was, to say the least of it, very unbecoming.
  • To say that a man has adopted a vulgar prejudice, is calculated to give offence to no one but an illiterate booby, who does not know the meaning of the words, or a captious, inflated self-sufficient pedant.
  • Though it remained bad-tempered, captious, and unfriendly, it never went short of food. CHARMED LIFE
  • All this exactness of requisition appeared to me to be going rather too far; and I exhibited my feeling on the subject, in the tone in which I replied, that I had stated every thing that was necessary for the satisfaction of a "man of sense, but that I had neither the faculty nor the inclination to indulge the captiousness of any man. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843
  • But maybe that's because Greg Sargent's question is based on a captious and stingy premise. Hillary's Closer -- A Big Moment, Or Not Enough?
  • A rather more captious way of putting your submission seems to be that, and are searching for identity and you do not demonstrate identity by ignoring change.
  • You see paint indicate on the bucket 10% - rate of 20% add water, you attribute inurbane demand captious .
  • The voyage for me is almost over: I am in sight of port: like a good shipman, I have already sent down the lofty spars and housed the captious canvas in preparation for the long anchorage: I have little now to fear. Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions
  • Besides, captiousness, sullenness, and pouting are most exceedingly illiberal and vulgar. Letters to his son on The Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman
  • I do not want to sound captious, but what was happening is essentially my question.
  • It must be said it is difficult for any club to have one of these in the captious world of football.
  • Those interchanges have ranged from the thoughtful interplay of ideas and differing points of view, to the captious arguments of those whose only apparent mission in life is to dismiss anything or anyone pointing a way forward. Russell Bishop: What We Need Are A Few Good Cynics
  • I suppose the confused and abrupt expression of things here, in words scarcely affording a tolerable sense, is rather from weakness than captiousness; and so I shall let the manner of the proposal pass. A Brief Declaration and Vindication of The Doctrine of the Trinity
  • Rather, you've accused me of captiousness and questioned by manners. The truth of Europe's roots
  • Is it simply captious to ask, if I had suggested 14 June, whether then it would have been brought back to 31 May?
  • Maybe it's the long, boring haul back from swine flu that's making me captious - see earlier post - but I am afraid that Sam Mendes is going to have get an e-kicking today. Smoking Guns and the Morality of Parliamentary Privilege
  • In his letters, as in conversation, he offers himself no sanctuary, and the picture we are left to gather is an exaggeration of the facts: cold, hard, captious, rarely affectionate, often gloomy.
  • Now the objector to all of this is charged with being captious, with seeking to impose restraints on activities which lie at the heart of democratic processes.
  • Probably those who engage in such histrionics and captious sophistry, do so because of some driven obsession with the desire to be eternally ‘original’.
  • If it is not wide-ranging and erratic, captious and unpredictable, it is not taste but snobbery.
  • The story is autobiographical, and the tyrannical, captious, arbitrary, and selfish landowner is the author's mother, Varvara Petrovna Turgeneva.
  • He has sworn there is only $1,000 of other debt out there apart from other sundry creditors, so for them to raise really, with respect, captious points about fairness and the like is interesting.
  • This looks like mere captiousness but it covers a perfectly genuine grievance. The Road to Wigan Pier
  • And he wasn't sure about how a Marx Brothers movie could resolve existential anxiety so fully, but seemed too captious to mention. The Guerilla Drive-In
  • These are not merely captious theoretical objections.
  • Crosby was particularly captious of Waters, arguing that she was, after all, a highly regarded actress and celebrated role model for the African American community.
  • Well, since you didn't reply in substance or with the captiousness common to the topic, you, at least, won't be indicted as a hijacker!
  • There is nothing captious about a man who has attained to this, the one possible apotheosis in life, the Apotheosis of Stupidity; and he begins to feel dignified and longaevous like a tree. An Inland Voyage
  • With program rivalries, people are said to be more captious and aware of the shows they are watching.
  • How to satisfy a net to buy customer people captious appetite?

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