What's the difference between favorable and specious?

Favorable


Definition:

  • (n.) Full of favor; favoring; manifesting partiality; kind; propitious; friendly.
  • (n.) Conducive; contributing; tending to promote or facilitate; advantageous; convenient.
  • (n.) Beautiful; well-favored.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) While it is true that Clinton’s favorability rating is languishing among all voters, her favorability among Democrats is as robust as Biden’s, at nearly 75% .
  • (2) Conditions consistent with a buildup of reduced flavoprotein, however, favored filament formation.
  • (3) Only Arteparon had a favorable effect on the integrity of the articular surface.
  • (4) In fact, the distribution of [3H]oleate between plasma membranes and unilamellar vesicles of lipids extracted from these membranes was in favor of the lipids, indicating the absence of a detectable amount of binding to a putative fatty acid binding protein in plasma membranes.
  • (5) During the interview process, nurse applicants frequently inquire about the availability of such a program and have been very favorably impressed when we have been able to offer them this approach to orientation.
  • (6) The accumulated evidence would strongly favor an affirmative answer.
  • (7) Our findings suggest that many traditional biological features used to estimate prognosis in ALL can be discarded in favor of clinical features (leukocyte count, age, and race) and cytogenetics (ploidy) for planning of future clinical trials.
  • (8) Although histologic proof of regression is not available, this experience suggests a more favorable prognosis than previously thought possible.
  • (9) Pathological changes may, thus, be initially confined to projecting and intrinsic neurons localized in cortical and subcortical olfactory structures; arguments are advanced which favor the view that excitotoxic phenomena could be mainly responsible for the overall degenerative picture.
  • (10) This structural change opens the heme pocket and modifies the general conformation of the EF segment, thus explaining the increase in oxygen affinity and the achievement of a three-dimensional structure favoring asparagine deamidation.
  • (11) The reported study demonstrates that performance asymmetries between normal or reflected letters presented in the right and left visual field favors the right visual field when stimulus patterns are blocked and rotated 90 degrees clockwise and favors the left visual field when they are blocked and rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise.
  • (12) Generally the course of symptoms was more favorable, when people found a satisfactory job.
  • (13) The compounds favored the development of bacteria of the genus Pseudomonas and inhibited the growth of all other gram-negative bacteria.
  • (14) This compares favorably to our previous experience in survivors of prehospital cardiac arrest not receiving a controlled antiarrhythmic program.
  • (15) The same experimental conditions that favored a large component of Cao-activated Na efflux also caused a large increase in Ca influx.
  • (16) In favorable cases, tRNA-DNA hybrids of length about 80 nucleotide pairs can be recognized (although with difficulty).
  • (17) Patients with grade 2 carcinoma could be separated into one subgroup with small nuclei (mean nuclear area less than or equal to 95 microns2) having a favorable outcome (5-year survival rate: 100%), and into another subgroup with large nuclei (mean nuclear area greater than 95 microns2) showing a worse prognosis (5-year survival rate: 63.2%) (Mantel-Cox, P = .01).
  • (18) The favorable prognosis is due solely to the fact that women with an IUD have far less negative antecedents and that the EP probably occurred due to impaired ciliary action, reversible when the IUD is removed.
  • (19) Employment patterns favored men returning to work, and number of hours worked was highly correlated with less depression, younger age, and return of energy.
  • (20) The immunologic technique compared favorably with the autoradiographic methods performed concurrently on the same cultures.

Specious


Definition:

  • (a.) Presenting a pleasing appearance; pleasing in form or look; showy.
  • (a.) Apparently right; superficially fair, just, or correct, but not so in reality; appearing well at first view; plausible; as, specious reasoning; a specious argument.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Comment is perfectly legitimate, but the sneering, supercilious, specious and dismissive contributions masquerading as ‘commentary’ belittle the claims of a ‘quality’ paper.” Before attempting to assess the validity of the reader’s analysis – broadly shared by some other readers – I think his email reflects one or two other interesting aspects of the demographics of the Guardian’s readership and the left.
  • (2) Photograph: Da Capo Lifelong Books This is why I have no patience for anyone who insists that women must learn self-defense moves and memorize lists of specious advice to prevent our own victimization.
  • (3) To start with, despite my son's diagnosis, the local authority did what a lot of local authorities do, and refused to assess him, on the most specious of grounds.
  • (4) Please, get rid of the gimmicks – the faux-concerned and impersonal feedback loop and the specious “choice” paradigm designed to soften us up for privatisation – and listen to your frontline staff.
  • (5) And when you ask someone who’s passed along some specious “don’t get raped” tips or suggested a self-defense class to a woman concerned about rapes in her neighborhood what they were thinking, they’re likely to respond with something like “Better safe than sorry!” Translation: Even if what I’m telling you to remember is a pile of stinking horseshit, you should still engage in this ritualized expression of anxiety with me, because it makes me feel slightly better about things I can’t control.
  • (6) Roger Jones, editor of the British Journal of General Practice David Colquhoun's critique of my journal's peer review and editorial processes is based on a single table lifted from the main research paper, in which the detailed numerical data tell a somewhat different story, rendering his analysis partial and his conclusions specious.
  • (7) Dolezal’s specious claims to black ancestry and faux black identity could not have been sustained and she would not have been able to pass if black womanhood were seen and understood as more than skin – or weave – deep.
  • (8) On Monday, two Conservative chancellors, Nigel Lawson and Norman Lamont, accused Downing Street of publishing a Treasury document that amounted to propaganda , while one MP, Marcus Fysh, described it as “specious bollocks”.
  • (9) These two findings together predict that individuals known to have a marked PMR may have the diagnostic risk associated with these specious artifacts reduced by receiving diazepam before clinical ERG studies are begun.
  • (10) There is a creeping sense that this is turning into a cash cow for the private sector, a get-out-clause for the government ("we've spent all this money, if people can't get jobs despite our help, it's because they are inadequate"), and unemployed people will be left at the bottom, ceaselessly harassed by a totally specious narrative in which their laziness beggars a try-hard administration.
  • (11) Superficially it looks like the rightwing press falling into yet another fit of specious morality.
  • (12) Retrospectively applying the rubric of terrorism is specious.
  • (13) Boris Johnson trails his quest to return to the Commons – and obviously to become Tory leader – with the specious claim that the UK could have a “great and glorious future” outside the EU .
  • (14) P+ strains of serotypes 1b (two strains), 4b (seven strains), and untypeable (one strain) were isolated from nine Apodemus specious and one Apodemus argenteus.
  • (15) Asked about the attempt to destabilise his leadership, Clegg said: "I think it's odd, to put it very mildly, that any fellow Liberal Democrat should spend time and good money while the rest of us were out campaigning for these tough elections instead surreptitiously trying to come up with specious claims on the basis of polls, which were in any case entirely confounded by the election results.
  • (16) A number of arguments as to why aggregation produces spurious correlations are considered and shown to be specious.
  • (17) Further, as Prof Dimitro Godzinsky, of the Ukranian National Academy of Sciences, states in his introduction to the report: "Against this background of such persuasive data some defenders of atomic energy look specious as they deny the obvious negative effects of radiation upon populations.
  • (18) Four specious combinations of the mosquitos were distinguished as anthropophilic, sylvatic, meadow and marsh ones.
  • (19) It should reflect the seriousness of the crime committed and the magnitude of the harm suffered by the victim, and it is specious to argue that the child is not damaged most by the sexual abuse that took place in order for the image to be created.
  • (20) Ag-Gag laws have passed or are pending in nearly a dozen states , with Idaho's powerful dairy industry now the latest to use these specious legal arguments to hide unsavory practices.