(n.) One of a class of men who taught eloquence, philosophy, and politics in ancient Greece; especially, one of those who, by their fallacious but plausible reasoning, puzzled inquirers after truth, weakened the faith of the people, and drew upon themselves general hatred and contempt.
(n.) Hence, an impostor in argument; a captious or fallacious reasoner.
Example Sentences:
(1) "With the advent of sophisticated data-processing capabilities (including big data), the big number-crunchers can detect, model and counter all manner of online activities just by detecting the behavioural patterns they see in the data and adjusting their tactics accordingly.
(2) A developing sophistication on the part of both children and parents, coupled with a rapidly expanding recognition of the need to minimize the amount of physical and psychological trauma that a child has to experience, has led to a growing use of premedication agents for children.
(3) The initial defect can be directly measured by glucose clamp and other sophisticated techniques; the clinical syndrome may be derived from a network of related variables known to be associated with reduced insulin action.
(4) While simple assays of complex I activity are unlikely to be useful in the preclinical detection of Parkinson's disease, other more sophisticated physical-chemical approaches including detection of free radical damage may have utility.
(5) This is not some sophisticated, Westminstery battle, but a life-and-death, misery-or-decency choice about the very basics of life for hundreds of thousands of older British people.
(6) While the high sophistication subjects rated the interpretation as accurate across validity conditions, the low sophistication subjects rated the interpretation according to the validity instructions they received.
(7) Lateralization may be an expression of reflex constraints bound initially to the infant's tonic-neck posture, with later development less reflex-patterned during the acquisition of more sophisticated information-processing strategies.
(8) A simple multiband volume control is expected to provide much of the benefit of more sophisticated systems without the need for separate estimation of input speech and noise spectra.
(9) What’s imperative from an organizational standpoint, he added, is “understanding where voters are, what their concerns are, and building a sophisticated operation around that.
(10) The laws of functioning applicable to these approaches are those coming from liberal and planified economical theories while health planning has developed more and more sophisticated and convincing methodologies.
(11) Therefore, controlled hypotension, being a sophisticated technique, requires handling by an experienced anesthetist well aware of contraindications and the need for adequate monitoring for prevention of tissue ischemia.
(12) However, a homemade pipe bomb thrown at a police patrol in north Belfast earlier this year was described as of a new, sophisticated variety that the PSNI had not seen before.
(13) While numerous studies on infant perception have demonstrated the infant's ability to discriminate sounds having different frequencies, little research has evaluated more sophisticated pitch perception abilities such as perceptual constancy and perception of the missing fundamental.
(14) It is concluded that imaging of the urinary tract is not necessary for pure nightwetters, while ultrasonography or uroflowmetry and more sophisticated radiological or urological methods should be focused on those children with daytime wetting and clinical symptoms of voiding disturbances.
(15) When multiple database systems are present, a flexible front end can provide sophisticated querying capabilities that bridge the systems, while hiding the complexities of the multiple systems from the user.
(16) This validity coefficient turned out to be so high (r = 0.967) that it does not seem necessary to adopt a more sophisticated method, despite a few demonstrable shortcomings of the one in use.
(17) The comparison of drug responder and non-responder group has also been made more meaningful by the availability of more reliable methods of assessing clinical phenomena, more sophisticated diagnostic models and the introduction of other biological measures.
(18) The environment in the intensive therapy units (ITUs) has thus become increasingly sophisticated with the use of highly specialised equipment.
(19) Attempts to save parts of teeth go back 100 years or more, but it is the increased predictability of success of endodontic therapy and the increased sophistication of periodontal treatment that have given us the means to save molars with furcation problems that, otherwise, would be lost.
(20) The monitoring equipment gets more sophisticated and easier to use month by month.
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.