Word of the Day Archive
Friday May 19, 2006
spurious \SPYUR-ee-uhs\ , adjective:
1. Not proceeding from the true or claimed source; not genuine; false.
2. Of illegitimate birth.
Some of these graves are clearly spurious and were manufactured by nineteenth-century royalists who wanted evidence of an unbroken 2,000-year-old imperial line.
-- Gale Eisenstodt, "Behind the Chrysanthemum Curtain", The Atlantic, November 1998
We need at least to separate the real issue from the spurious.
-- Eugene D. Genovese, "Getting States' Rights Right", The Atlantic, March 2001
Well, setting aside the sentimental nostalgia that elevates the "good old days" to a spurious perfection . . . the fact remains that Nellie Melba was a unique vocal phenomenon.
-- Tim Page, "For Melba a Well-Deserved Toast", Washington Post, February 9, 2003
Spurious comes from Latin spurius, "illegitimate, hence false, inauthentic."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for spurious
