Adjective

(en adjective)

Thin in substance or consistency.

The aether was thought to be of tenuous strands.

insubstantial

His argument was not convincing in the debate, considering how tenuous it was.

* July 18 2012 , Scott Tobias, AV Club The Dark Knight Rises [http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-dark-knight-rises-review-batman,82624/]

Picking up eight years after The Dark Knight left off, the film finds Gotham enjoying a tenuous peace based on Harvey Dent’s moral ideals rather than the ugly truth of his demise.

Adjective

(en adjective)

Not noble; unbecoming true honor or dignity; mean; unworthy; fake or deceptive.

Not ingenuous; not frank or open; uncandid; unworthily or meanly artful.

* 1726 , , The Poems of Alexander Pope: The Odyssey of Homer. Books XIII-XXIV , edited by Maynard Mack, Methuen, 1969, volume 10, page 378:

I am not so vain as to think these Remarks free from faults, nor so disingenuous as not to confess them:

Assuming a pose of naivete to make a point or for deception.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-03

, author=William E. Carter, Merri Sue Carter , title=The British Longitude Act Reconsidered , volume=100, issue=2, page=87 , magazine= citation , passage=But was it responsible governance to pass the Longitude Act without other efforts to protect British seamen? Or might it have been subterfuge—a disingenuous attempt to shift attention away from the realities of their life at sea.}}