Specious Meaning and Usage

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Specious Meaning:

adjective

- having the ring of truth or plausibility but actually fallacious
- plausible, but deceptive; apparently, but not actually true;
- superficially attractive, deceptively attractive.

“a specious claim” “a specious argument” “specious statistics”

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Derivatives:

speciously - adverb
speciosity - noun
speciousness - noun

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Use specious in a sentence:

1. The internet is full of websites claiming speciously about making “easy” money online.

2. They realized that the sales pitch was specious when the company suddenly went out of business.

3. The jury saw through the defense lawyer's specious argument and convicted the murderer on the weight of the evidence.

4. The priest tried to convince me that evolution was false, but his arguments were specious.

5. The candidate affected a specious show of liberality merely to attract votes.

6. Jane tried to talk her way out of the ticket, but the cop told her that her argument was specious.

7. From the get-go Jane felt that Mark's claim was specious, but he insisted he was telling the truth and she couldn't at first prove otherwise.

8. As he took yet another deep breath of that speciously sweet cinnamon smell, it seemed to him that he had never wanted anything so badly in his whole life.

9. It was her neglecting to account for the difference in time zones that made Goody’s calculated arrival time specious.

10. The student's specious excuse for being late sounded legitimate, but was proved otherwise when his teacher called his home.

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Specious Synonyms:
alleged, apparent, apparently right, beguiling, casuistic, colorable, conceivable, counterfactual, credible, deceptive, fallacious, false, gilded, hypocritical, illogical, insincere, invalid, meretricious, misleading, ostensible, plausible, possible, presumable, presumed, presumptive, probable, purported, seeming, seemingly just, sophistic, sophistical, spurious, superficial, supposed, truthless, unsound, untrue, untruthful, wrong.

Specious Antonyms:
real, true, valid

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Specious Mnemonic:
This word is actually close to a similar sounding word: “suspicious”

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Some more sentences:

1. There was a specious attractiveness about Mark which might conceivably win a girl's heart for a time; he wrote poetry, talked well, and had a nice singing voice; but, as a partner for life ... well, he simply wouldn't do.

2. The title had seemed so promising overnight--so full of strenuous possibilities. It was still speciously attractive; but now that the moment had arrived for writing the story, its flaws became manifest.

3. “The chauffeur continued his specious examination of the sky”

4. The "do nothing, yet earn millions" claim made by some of the online businesses are specious in nature.

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