Word of the DayWednesday, September 08, 1999
specious
\SPEE-shuhs\ , adjective:1.
Apparently right; superficially fair, just, or correct, but not so in reality; as, "specious reasoning; a specious argument."
2.
Deceptively pleasing or attractive.
Quotes:
None of those alleged crises really is. They all rest on specious claims about financial abstractions, on scare stories about impending bankruptcy.
-- James K. Galbraith, Created Unequal
A specious theory is confuted by this free and perfect experiment.
-- Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
His descendant later took great pride in these specious titles, and Hawthorne humorously addressed him as "the Count."
-- Edward L. Widmer, Young America
Origin:
Specious is from Latin speciosus, from species, "appearance," from specere, "to look at."
