Webster
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Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Captious

Cap′tious (kăp′shŭs), a. [F. captieux, L. captiosus. See Caption.] 1. Apt to catch at faults; disposed to find fault or to cavil; eager to object; difficult to please.

A captious and suspicious age. Stillingfleet.

I am sensible I have not disposed my materials to abide the test of a captious controversy. Bwike.

2. Fitted to harass, perplex, or insnare; insidious; troublesome.

Captious restraints on navigation. Bancroft.

Syn. — Caviling, carping, fault-finding; censorious; hypercritical; peevish, fretful; perverse; troublesome. — Captious, caviling, Carping. A captious person is one who has a fault-finding habit or manner, or is disposed to catch at faults, errors, etc., with quarrelsome intent; a caviling person is disposed to raise objections on frivolous grounds; carping implies that one is given to ill-natured, persistent, or unreasonable fault-finding, or picking up of the words or actions of others.

Caviling is the carping of argument, carping the caviling of ill temper. C. J. Smith.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.