Word of the Day Archive
Friday March 21, 2003
supposititious \suh-poz-uh-TISH-uhs\ , adjective:
1. Fraudulently substituted for something else; not being what it purports to be; not genuine; spurious; counterfeit.
2. Hypothetical; supposed.
He has threatened to write a small treatise exposing my stones as supposititious -- I should say, his stones, fashioned and fraudulently made by his hand.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The lying stones of Wurzburg and Marrakech", Natural History, April, 1998
The major shortcoming of the woman's approach, however, is the treatment of Rose Trollope, who becomes in this version of her husband's life not the substantial figure that she must have been, but a supposititious creation, the result of unremitting conjecture and speculation.
-- Janice Carlisle, "Trollope", Victorian Studies, March 1, 1995
Supposititious is from Latin suppositicius, from suppositus, past participle of supponere, "to put under, to substitute," from sub-, "under" + ponere, "to put." It is related to suppose.
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for supposititious
