Adjective

(en adjective)

(obsolete) That captures; especially, (of an argument, words etc.) designed to capture or entrap in misleading arguments; sophistical.

* 1605 , (William Shakespeare), :

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.

* 1784 , (William Cowper), "A Review of Schools", in Poems , 1859 ed., page 219:

A captious question, sir, and yours is one, / Deserves an answer similar, or none.

* {{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):

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.

* 2009 , Anne Karpf, The Guardian , 24 Jan 2009:

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.

Adjective

(er)

Displaying or feeling anger.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=5 , passage=Then we relapsed into a discomfited silence, and wished we were anywhere else. But Miss Thorn relieved the situation by laughing aloud, and with such a hearty enjoyment that instead of getting angry and more mortified we began to laugh ourselves, and instantly felt better.}}

(said about a wound or a rash) Inflamed and painful.

The broken glass left two angry cuts across my arm.

Dark and stormy, menacing.

Angry clouds raced across the sky.

* {{quote-book, 1756, (Christopher Smart), 3= The Book of the Epodes, chapter=Ode II, by=(Horace)

, passage=