What is another word for captious?

Pronunciation: [kˈapʃəs] (IPA)

Captious is an adjective that describes a person who is quick to find fault, often over trivial matters. Some synonyms for the word 'captious' include petty, carping, fault-finding, and nit-picking. Another synonym is caviling which is to make trivial or petty objections to something. Other synonymous words for captious are hair-splitting, hypercritical, pedantic, and overcritical. These words denote a critical and picky nature. Additionally, captious personalities are described as hypercritical, overscrupulous, fault-seeking, quibbling, or argumentative. The word captious is often used in the context of criticism and negative feedback, especially when such feedback is deemed unwarranted or overly harsh.

Synonyms for Captious:

What are the hypernyms for Captious?

A hypernym is a word with a broad meaning that encompasses more specific words called hyponyms.

What are the opposite words for captious?

Captious means being overly critical or nitpicky, and its antonyms include generous, liberal, kind, and charitable. A person who is liberal in their views is often open-minded and accepting of different opinions, while someone who is generous is giving and considerate. Kindness towards others also implies a willingness to listen and empathize with others, rather than consistently finding fault with them. These antonyms suggest a more positive and responsive attitude towards the world, rather than a constant negative focus. So, to be less captious, one could focus on being more generous, liberal, kind, and charitable.

What are the antonyms for Captious?

Usage examples for Captious

There was no breeze that afternoon, and the air was still and heavy; the white prairie flung back a trying light, even on to the shaded veranda, and she felt restless, captious and irritable.
"A Prairie Courtship"
Harold Bindloss
From this it may be inferred that there was never any complaint of Field's manuscript from the most exacting and captious of all newspaper departments-the composing room.
"Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions"
Slason Thompson
Her mother was very captious, and the babies fell off.
"In Wild Rose Time"
Amanda M. Douglas

Famous quotes with Captious

  • I am not much an advocate for travelling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home? I have been quoted as saying captious things about travel; but I mean to do justice. .... He that does not fill a place at home, cannot abroad. He only goes there to hide his insignificance in a larger crowd. You do not think you will find anything there which you have not seen at home? The stuff of all countries is just the same. Do you suppose there is any country where they do not scald milk-pans, and swaddle the infants, and burn the brushwood, and broil the fish? What is true anywhere is true everywhere. And let him go where he will, he can only find so much beauty or worth as he carries.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson

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