(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.
Spurious
Definition:
(a.) Not proceeding from the true source, or from the source pretended; not genuine; false; adulterate.
(a.) Not legitimate; bastard; as, spurious issue.
Example Sentences:
(1) The definitions, aetiology, and symptomatology of the diastema mediale superior are discussed in the present study on the basis of personal experience and reports in the literature, special attention being paid to the verbal evaluation of "genuine" or "spurious".
(2) The origin of spurious currents and how they must be minimized in the design of either a liquid- or gas-filled ionization chamber is discussed.
(3) Men might not have frills and furbelows as women traditionally do, but they’ve got spurious function: knobs on their watches or extra pockets on their jackets that are just as decorative as anything women wear.” 6.
(4) The double-antibody technic showed spuriously elevated levels, and the single-antibody technic showed low levels of serum TSH by radioimmunoassay in the presence of antibodies.
(5) Buckling down to China's restrictive rules gave a spurious respectability to such activities without helping Google much since Baidu, its Chinese equivalent, still has 70% of the search market.
(6) Insertion of the trimer into several expression vectors efficiently prevented spurious expression of reporter genes resulting from transcriptional initiation in prokaryotic plasmid sequences in transfected mammalian cells.
(7) The drug paracetamol (N-acetyl-p-aminophenol; acetaminophen) caused a spurious increase in serum uric acid measured by phosphotungstic acid reduction methods.
(8) RSL kick off... 3.09am GMT Speaking of epic... …this might be a spurious link, but I don't care.
(9) The results imply that the traditional methods of sacrifice may result in the measurement of spuriously low tissue concentrations of some peptides, e.g.
(10) The risk of reporting a chance spurious association could be reduced if family studies, such as sib comparisons, were carried out at the same time as the original survey, rather than after many surveys have been conducted.
(11) That is to say, an identification via projective identification has taken place, which heightens intrinsic omnipotence, to allow what has been termed the identificate to believe that it has become the desired object--and thereby that within this spuriously organized ego-structure exist the characteristics and functions of the object or part object that has been taken over.
(12) However, medical experts told the Guardian last week that assertions by Arizona officials that Wood was “brain dead” during the execution are spurious.
(13) Dom's being very hard on himself - he couldn't write spurious nonsense if he tried.
(14) A patient blood sample with an unexpectedly high hemoglobin level, high hematocrit, low white blood cell count, and low platelet count was recognized as being spurious based on previously available data.
(15) This method includes ways of carrying out 'tight' or 'loose' grouping, of allowing for variability of reporting of physical features by different observers, and of minimising the number of 'spurious' groups.
(16) This trend in the level of underenumeration has spuriously blunted the true increasing incidence of melanoma and may limit the ability to monitor and study this disease in the future.
(17) Between 1982 and 1989 we identified 47 subjects with spuriously increased concentrations of free thyroxin (FT4) or free triiodothyronine (FT3) related to autoantibody interference in analog FT4 and (or) FT3 methods.
(18) To elucidate spurious correlation among these indices and T3, partial correlation analysis among these indices and its influencing factors were calculated.
(19) Opponents say that by giving development plans green credentials that may be spurious, offsetting speeds up planning approvals in practice, and limits natural environments for flora and fauna in absolute terms.
(20) Two patients are described with spurious leukopenia secondary to in vitro aggregation of neutrophils.