Cantankerous vs Captious - What's the difference?
cantankerous | captious |
given to or marked by an ill-tempered nature, ill-tempered, cranky, surly, crabby.
* 1839 , Fraser's magazine for town and country, Volume 20, p618
* 1866 Every Saturday, Volume 2, p355
* 1947 , John Courtenay Trewin, Plays of the year: Volume 47, 195
* 1998 , Pauline Chazan, The moral self, 80
* 2004 , 386 F. 3d 192 - Jacques v. Dimarzio Inc
* 2004 , 386 F. 3d 192 - Jacques v. Dimarzio Inc
* 2007 , Linda Francis Lee, The Devil in the Junior League, p44
* from where is this quotation?
* 2010 ,
(obsolete) That captures; especially, (of an argument, words etc.) designed to capture or entrap in misleading arguments; sophistical.
* 1605 , (William Shakespeare), :
* 1784 , (William Cowper), "A Review of Schools", in Poems , 1859 ed.,
* {{quote-book, 1815, date=March 24, chapter=To William Lisle Bowles, author=(Samuel Taylor Coleridge), pageurl=http://books.google.com/books?id=P98V-3-qzp0C&pg=PA558, page=558, edition=2000 Oxford ed., isbn=0198187459, title=Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
, passage=Were you aware that in your discourse last Sunday you attributed the captious Problem of the Sadducees to the Pharisees, as a proof of the obscure and sensual doctrines of the latter? }}
Having a disposition to find fault unreasonably or to raise petty objections; cavilling, nitpicky
* 1968 , Sidney Monas, translating Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866):
* 2009 , Anne Karpf, The Guardian , 24 Jan 2009:
As adjectives the difference between cantankerous and captious
is that cantankerous is given to or marked by an ill-tempered nature, ill-tempered, cranky, surly, crabby while captious is (obsolete) that captures; especially, (of an argument, words etc) designed to capture or entrap in misleading arguments; sophistical.cantankerous
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- she is a cantankerous old maid fretting and snarling over the loss of her beauty.
- The great principle on which the privileges of cantankerous folly and ill-nature found is this: that as we go on through life we grow somewhat cowardly; and if a thing be disagreeable, we just keep out of its way: sometimes by rather shabby expedients.
- I am being cantankerous'''. Some days I feel so '''cantankerous I could take a machine-gun into the streets and shoot down the whole population of Hendon Central; I don't know why.
- By contrast, cantankerous and churlish people are contemptuously independent of others’ opinions, not caring enough about others and their views.
- The cantankerous are those "marked by ill humor, irritability, and determination to disagree." Webster's New International Dictionary 328 (3d ed.1986).
- All things being equal, a cantankerous person or a curmudgeon would be more secure by becoming more unpleasant.
- Nina was thrilled, muttering her cantankerous joy that I was getting out of the house.
- The cantankerous landlord always grumbled when asked to fix something.
- Unfortunately, as Great-Aunt Bert could be a bit cantankerous , they were having to be creative
captious
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- I know I loue in vaine, striue against hope: / Yet in this captious , and intemible Siue / I still poure in the waters of my loue / And lacke not to loose still.
page 219:
- A captious question, sir, and yours is one, / Deserves an answer similar, or none.
- But Peter Petrovich did not accept this retort. On the contrary, he became all the more captious and irritable, as though he were just hitting his stride.
- The "Our Bold" column, nitpicking at errors in other periodicals, can look merely captious , and its critics often seem to be wildly and collectively wrong-headed.