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How To Use Specious In A Sentence

  • I've always found this kind of argument a little specious, since most people don't know and could care less about when a composer wrote a work.
  • No caustic reproach, no specious arguments against the plan, no long-suffering resignation. C B GREENFIELD - A LITTLE MADNESS
  • He never learnt Irish and his philological arguments tended to invoke specious homophones and improbable etymologies.
  • He offers a speciously complicated analysis.
  • Behe’s claim of the experimental refutability of ID, made under oath, is specious. An Experimental Test of ID? Really? - The Panda's Thumb
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  • The Press dilated speciously on the economy practised under the system and on its general advantageousness. The Siege of Kimberley
  • Muris: as a decisionmaker, when a party insists on fighting an obviously specious point, it casts doubt on other points. Archive 2009-06-01
  • The nature versus nurture debate was specious, but not for the reasons he had supposed. A THEORY OF RELATIVITY
  • No caustic reproach, no specious arguments against the plan, no long-suffering resignation. C B GREENFIELD - A LITTLE MADNESS
  • It is unlikely that the Duke was convinced by such specious arguments.
  • These arguments are specious, but they are based on rosy assumptions or bad analogies.
  • The author believed that these criticize speciously, with historical actually not symbol.
  • Occasionally, you hear the specious argument that musicians don't need the money they might lose to the Internet services.
  • The Enforcement Lawsuit isn't a fantastic talk in China, on the contrary it survives speciously.
  • But, to have done with these episodical observations, let me return to the more specious slavery which chains the very soul of woman, keeping her for ever under the bondage of ignorance. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
  • Still, I felt vaguely specious to be standing up at the front with the other three. THE CALLIGRAPHER
  • This is a specious argument that he has been making.
  • It countermands any specious defences of appropriation when applied to marginal culture that pivot on the double standard, allowing us to point to the precise effects of misrepresentation and discrimination that are resultant from the appropriation, and allows us to challenge the appropriation on a level of legtimacy that is not hamstrung by an implicit privileging. More on Cultural Appropriation
  • If then women are not a swarm of ephemeron triflers, why should they be kept in ignorance under the specious name of innocence? A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
  • He had made some specious excuse about failing to recognize her, and in the end they had had coffee together. A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE
  • The pope and the sacred college had never been dazzled by his specious professions; they were justly offended by the insolence of his conduct; a cardinal legate was sent to Italy, and after some fruitless treaty, and two personal interviews, he fulminated a bull of excommunication, in which the tribune is degraded from his office, and branded with the guilt of rebellion, sacrilege, and heresy. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
  • Thomas took her by the weak side, and usually arrested her "light-horse gallop of clish ma-claver" by some specious story of ghost or hobgoblin adventures, with which he had been detained. The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 17, No. 475, February 5, 1831
  • Now, if we'd been a directors 'meeting, no doubt there'd have been questions, and eleventeen holes shot in my specious statement — but prisoners in a cage surrounded by blood-thirsty Chinks don't reason straight (well, I do, but most don't). Flashman and the Dragon
  • What he required of us was that we avoided specious or muddled argument.
  • But not between reality and representation, for everything about a movie is necessarily the product of an artificer, and even ‘on-the-scene’ news reporting achieves only ‘a specious credibility’.
  • The case for large bonuses on top of large salaries is essentially specious, at least for anyone of my generation.
  • The speciousness of this argument is apparent.
  • Now since these dead bones have already outlasted the living ones of Methuselah, and in a yard underground, and thin walls of clay, outworn all the strong and specious buildings above it; and quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests: what prince can promise such diuturnity unto his relicks, or might not gladly say, Hydriotaphia, or Urn-burial
  • But as an intellectual exercise, and an allegedly serious meditation on the nature of spectatorship, it is specious and inert. Times, Sunday Times
  • The work is rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not, of solemn specious nonsense, about something unconnected with the story; an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of Buonaparte, or anything that would form a contrast, and bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness and epigrammatism of the general style. Jane Austen's Letters To Her Sister Cassandra and Others
  • Many proponents of personal accounts have used specious arguments about the potential for superior rates of return.
  • Isn't phrasal tmesis a syntactic equivalent of those ‘specious lines of play’ his books are filled with?
  • They made numerous wholly specious claims and at least one of the women witnesses confessed to having told downright porkies right from the start.
  • Now in a world where most of us walk very contentedly in the little lit circle of their own reason, and have to be reminded of what lies without by specious and clamant exceptions — earthquakes, eruptions of Virginibus Puerisque and other papers
  • So little of the fop; yet so elegant and rich in his dress: his person so specious: his air so intrepid: so much meaning and penetration in his face: so much gaiety, yet so little affectation; no mere toupet-man; but all manly; and his courage and wit, the one so known, the other so dreaded, you must think the petits-maîtres Clarissa Harlowe
  • It is unlikely that the Duke was convinced by such specious arguments.
  • He had made some specious excuse about failing to recognize her, and in the end they had had coffee together. A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE
  • The Sherpa-roadies were ecstatic and told jokes throughout the evening, while each of us nodded speciously, not really listening.
  • If money is abused, there's going to be a crisis; at some point there will be a ‘run’ from specious financial claims.
  • One could argue that such restrictions "abridge" the freedom of the press, but that argument would be specious. Right on the Left Coast: Views From a Conservative Teacher
  • Some of those are probably silly - but the reductum argument made by the proprietaries is specious. Higher Education Lobby, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
  • The usual specious arguments we see in one country are now being regurgitated in others.
  • Comparing blood quantum to a diagram on genre that speculativizes any writing with a teeny bit of novum is specious. More on Map of Spec Fic
  • The arguments were specious and plausible, but not quite convictive. The Offspring of Fancy
  • If their refusal to specify is specious (ah, the glory of alliteration!), then I think we're entitled to infer that they are hiding something. Balkinization
  • When you make up an entirely specious religion in a juvenile attempt to shelter your fashion choices behind the first amendment, what sort of morally bankrupt person are you?
  • The play speciously associates giving all with ultimate return.
  • Now, the dictionaries are all at one in suggesting that colourability carries with it a notion of speciousness or sham, falsity, lack of good faith, and that is entirely consistent with the way the authorities have dealt with it.
  • However, most of his evidence is in the form of specious and fallacious arguments.
  • It is a specious and cynical reference at best.
  • III.i. 136 (378,7) [my in-cony Jew] [W. jewel] I know not whether it be fit, however specious, to change _Jew_ to _jewel_. Notes to Shakespeare — Volume 01: Comedies
  • This is more specious than GOP accusations about Harry Reid. tg Says: Matthew Yglesias » Scott Brown Questions Barack Obama’s Parentage
  • 'That would not signify so much,' said Carr, 'if the man was honest; but I may say to you, that, under the most specious professions of honesty, I don't believe there is a more crafty or mercenary head in Westminster Hall, than that orange tawny caxon his covers. The Old Manor House
  • But when I came to praise a faux professor of circumlocutory nonsense had razed the image immaculate – leaving a specious burst of wretched toadying. Silence As Magnanimous Respect
  • A sophism is taken as a specious argument used for deceiving someone. Intrusive Government: Quotes From the Past
  • The nature versus nurture debate was specious, but not for the reasons he had supposed. A THEORY OF RELATIVITY
  • Kindly keep your preposterous, specious opinions out of conversations that don't concern you!
  • This argument was presumably specious since the integrated system has since been jettisoned in favor of subcontracting.
  • But can we watch out for the same specious Mickey Finn being sprinkled into the drink? Two Points About Gitmo « Whatever
  • Must take a sip of coffee, the sapful spunk, then move on: my road is not thorny, that's for Jesus People, my road is smooth, the surface specious and nogood fumes effluence from it. Gyoza Express
  • But sly obfuscation and specious fault-finding don't help. Globe and Mail
  • Hartshorne thinks, to say that God exists in a nontemporal specious present, and it is another to say that God is changed by temporal beings in a nontemporal specious present. Charles Hartshorne
  • Christological question, an attitude whose heterodoxy was shrouded perhaps even from their own eyes in the beginning, by the specious distinction between natural and adoptive sonship; and it was a worthy tribute to the range of his patristic scholarship when Felix, the chief intellectual defender of Adoptionism, after the disputation with Alcuin at Aachen, acknowledged the error of his position. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 1: Aachen-Assize
  • Criticism should be founded on a writer's life and work, not just on previous criticism or specious theories.
  • We can't rally around specious information that diminishes our ability to think critically about real and present health threats.
  • Funny, isn't it, how Coulter drops ridiculous constructions like "oleaginous", but doesn't seem to know the meaning of the word "specious". Decency
  • Toward the preservation of your Government and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. Think Progress » Wall Street Republicans Form ‘Action Tank’ To Push Corporate Agenda
  • The novel thus exposes the speciousness of social discourses that worked to maintain the theory.
  • The omnifarious assembly included pale, prim-whiskered young clerks; shabby, lonely, sallow young women, whose sallowness and shabbiness stamped them with the mark of integrity; other females whose specious splendor was not nearly so reassuring; old men, broken-down men, middle-aged men of every description, except the well-to-do. Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2
  • I personally am sickened by those who hide behind empty platitudes in furtherance of justification of raping and killing innocent and weak people under specious claims of justification. The Volokh Conspiracy » Greenwald and Gaza
  • Still, I felt vaguely specious to be standing up at the front with the other three. THE CALLIGRAPHER
  • The nature versus nurture debate was specious, but not for the reasons he had supposed. A THEORY OF RELATIVITY
  • Hucksters flaunted their specious cure-ails on posters, broadsides, and other printed formats.
  • Global dimming is the source of George Will’s specious claim that scientists were warning us about global cooling in the 1970s. Think Progress » Jonah Goldberg: Concerns About Climate Change Are ‘Millenarian Battiness’
  • Now we see that it wasn't just some Israeli films being presented, but that Tel Aviv had actually been chosen to be "spotlighted" in the festival - and it's specious to claim it wasn't a result of Israeli lobbying when a direct program of "re-branding Israel" began in YayaCanada
  • The old saw about the bomb set to go off and only by waterboarding the terrorist can it be found to be disarmed is a specious argument. Tom McIntyre Explains His Picks for our 2009 Hunting and Fishing Heroes and Villians Face-Off
  • His presentation was very polished and, I would imagine, speciously appealing to many not familiar with the facts.
  • He fences his doctrines with the specious plea that statesmen mustlive as the world lives.
  • Specious little witch! she called me: your best manner, so full of art and design, had never been seen through, if you, with your blandishing ways, have not been put out of sight, and reduced to positive declarations! — Clarissa Harlowe
  • Although the argument was specious, since everyone knew the significance of the vote, he certainly had been evasive when questioned directly on the issue.
  • Yet there are dinosaurs who take a dim view of such a plan, their highly specious argument revolving around the nebulous concept of loyalty.
  • I am but a fool, look you; and yet I have the wit to think my master is a kind of a knave: but that's all one, if he be but one knave] [W: but one kind] This alteration is acute and specious, yet I know not whether, in Shakespeare's language, _one knave_ may not signify a _knave on only one occasion_, Notes to Shakespeare — Volume 01: Comedies
  • The constant drive to divide sex into various incoherent binaries is intellectually specious, politically dubious, and completely unsexy.
  • The bosonic fields in the quantum-physical world are much simpler and of a definite nature which cannot be said for the interactive social systems and therefore such extensions can be spurious or specious. Random market versus efficient market
  • Still, I felt vaguely specious to be standing up at the front with the other three. THE CALLIGRAPHER
  • the speciousness of his argument
  • Moreover, even sophisticated statistical analysis can sometimes yield specious results.
  • This was an entirely illegal military coup that was speciously legitimatized at what appears to have been gunpoint. Jules Siegel: Honduras Supreme Court: It Was "Common Knowledge" That Zelaya Was No Longer President UPDATE
  • a specious claim
  • The argument is obviously somewhat specious.
  • Now, if we'd been a directors 'meeting, no doubt there'd have been questions, and eleventeen holes shot in my specious statement - but prisoners in a cage surrounded by blood-thirsty Chinks don't reason straight (well, I do, but most don't). Flashman And The Dragon
  • The government speciously said it withheld to protect the privacy of the advice given by the.
  • We should take care to use arguments that aren't specious.
  • No caustic reproach, no specious arguments against the plan, no long-suffering resignation. C B GREENFIELD - A LITTLE MADNESS
  • Just as specious as Phillips 'artificial conflation of biological and catallactic competition, is the artificial opposition he sets up between competition and collaboration. Libertarian Blog Place
  • In this conception, which a remote history furnishes to his boundless ambition, the terrible antiquitarian finds the gigantic and suitable framework, the potent, specious terms, and all the verbal reasons he requires. The Modern Regime, Volume 2
  • Cabul by a courteous declinature to receive an Envoy, assigning several specious reasons. The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80
  • This, my Lord, you are permitted to do; they have no means of resistance; but think not to impose on me by a sophistical assertion of right, or to gloss the villainy of your conduct with the colours of justice; the artifice is beneath the desperate force of your character, and is not sufficiently specious to deceive the discernment of virtue. The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne: A Highland Story
  • So a dangerous tolerance of error and a specious attitude of humility towards truth has arisen.
  • He had made some specious excuse about failing to recognize her, and in the end they had had coffee together. A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE
  • To be certain, the forum member from yesterday was only using specious emotional arguments in order to try and limit your lawfully carrying a firearm, while "rectifier" is advocating cold-blooded, premeditated murder, but in the end, they are both seeking to accomplish the same thing: control over your life, and limiting your rights. Walls of the city
  • The court determined this argument was specious.
  • He excelled in that specious, though apparently heedless raillery, which is so apt to slip without suspicion into a lady's ear; and he could ply his suit, under this disguise, with such seeming artlessness and unconcern, that a lodgement in the citadel was sometimes effected ere the garrison was aware of the intrusion. Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2)
  • A visit to the region reveals the speciousness of its account.
  • Because the charges against the airlines were specious but successful, every pilot must worry that his good-faith effort to protect his passengers will trigger federal retaliation.

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