Cynical vs Captious - What's the difference?
cynical | captious |
Of or relating to the belief that human actions are motivated only or primarily by base desires or selfishness.
*(Samuel Johnson) (1709-1784)
*:I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received.
Skeptical of the integrity, sincerity, or motives of others.
Bitterly or jadedly distrustful or contemptuous; mocking.
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*:He seldom talked, and when he did, it was usually to make some cynical remark-for instance, he would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies.
Showing contempt for accepted moral standards by one's actions.
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*:When he, at Neergard's cynical suggestion, had consented to exploit his own cluband had consented to resign from it to do so, he had every reason to believe that Neergard meant to either mulct them heavily or buy them out. In either case, having been useful to Neergard, his profits from the transaction would have been considerable.
Like the actions of a snarling dog.
:
(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 cynical and captious
is that cynical is of or relating to the cynics, a sect of ancient greek philosophers who believed virtue to be the only good and self-control to be the only means of achieving virtue while captious is (obsolete) that captures; especially, (of an argument, words etc) designed to capture or entrap in misleading arguments; sophistical.cynical
English
Adjective
(en adjective)References
* * *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.