What's the difference between happy and specious?

Happy


Definition:

  • (superl.) Favored by hap, luck, or fortune; lucky; fortunate; successful; prosperous; satisfying desire; as, a happy expedient; a happy effort; a happy venture; a happy omen.
  • (superl.) Experiencing the effect of favorable fortune; having the feeling arising from the consciousness of well-being or of enjoyment; enjoying good of any kind, as peace, tranquillity, comfort; contented; joyous; as, happy hours, happy thoughts.
  • (superl.) Dexterous; ready; apt; felicitous.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This is not an argument for the status quo: teaching must be given greater priority within HE, but the flipside has to be an understanding on the part of students, ministers, officials, the public and the media that academics (just like politicians) cannot make everyone happy all of the time.
  • (2) Infants were habituated to models posing either prototypically positive displays (e.g., happy expressions) or positive expression blends (e.g., mock surprise).
  • (3) His greatest legacy, besides his three children, is the joy and happiness he offered to others, particularly to those fighting personal battles.
  • (4) United and West Ham are on similar runs and can feel pretty happy about themselves but are not as confident away from home as they are at home and that will have to change if they are to make ground on the top teams.
  • (5) Not even housebuilders are entirely happy, although recent government policies such as Help to Buy and the encouragement of easy credit have helped their share prices rise.
  • (6) I’m so happy to be joining Arsenal, a club which has a great manager, a fantastic squad of players, huge support around the world and a great stadium in London,” said Sánchez.
  • (7) As for gay men, there is absolutely nothing that suggests they are any less war-happy than heterosexuals.
  • (8) While the Spielberg of popular myth is Mr Nice Guy, Lean was known as an obsessive, cantankerous tyrant who didn't much like actors and was only truly happy locked away in the editing suite.
  • (9) That latter issue is quite controversial in Germany, where the Bundesbank is not happy about surrendering control to the ECB .
  • (10) The first problem facing Calderdale is sheep-rustling Happy Valley – filmed around Hebden Bridge, with its beautiful stone houses straight off the pages of the Guardian’s Lets Move To – may be filled with rolling hills and verdant pastures, but the reality of rural issues are harsh.
  • (11) Outwardly, his life was successful, happy, on course.
  • (12) Pointing out that “the army has its own fortune teller”, he sounds less than happy at the state of affairs: “The country is run by superstition.” Weerasethakul is in a relatively fortunate position, in that his arcane films are not exactly populist and don’t depend on the mainstream Thai film industry for funding, but he has become cast as a significant voice of dissent in a difficult time .
  • (13) John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, said the landowners his group represents "are obviously not happy" that the beetles are being removed.
  • (14) I was just happy he got his licence back so I could clean him out."
  • (15) He is an academy product and truthfully we are, and me above all, happy to have him with us.
  • (16) Thirty-two nursing students were shown silent films in which 10 normal and 10 schizophrenic women described a happy, sad, and an angry personal experience.
  • (17) Indeed, the distribution of couples according to a multifactorial risk index does in fact establish a connection between the couple's happiness and the level of risk during sexual relations within and outside the couple.
  • (18) But some wise old heads sniff into their handkerchiefs because they have sat through too many costly "happy ever after" ceremonies that ended in acrimony.
  • (19) I can calmly say that his future will still be at Juventus, where he feels very happy,” he parped.
  • (20) In a series of analyses guided by intuitive hypotheses, the Smith and Ellsworth theoretical approach, and a relatively unconstrained, open-ended exploration of the data, the situations were found to vary with respect to the emotions of pride, jealousy or envy, pride in the other, boredom, and happiness.

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.