different between captious vs splenetic

English

Etymology

From Middle English capcious, from Middle French captieux, or its source, Latin capti?sus, from capti?.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?kæp??s/

Adjective

captious (comparative more captious, superlative most captious)

1. (obsolete) That captures; especially, (of an argument, words etc.) designed to capture or entrap in misleading arguments; sophistical.

   Synonyms: tricky, thorny, sophistical

2. Having a disposition to find fault unreasonably or to raise petty objections; cavilling, nitpicky.
   • 1968, Sidney Monas, translating Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866):

     But Peter Petrovich did not accept this retort. On the contrary, he became all the more captious and irritable, as though he were just hitting his stride.

   • 2009, Anne Karpf, The Guardian, 24 Jan 2009:

     The "Our Bold" column, nitpicking at errors in other periodicals, can look merely captious, and its critics often seem to be wildly and collectively wrong-headed.

   Synonyms: carping, critical, faultfinding, hypercritical, nitpicky

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Anagrams

• autopsic

English

Alternative forms

• splenetick (obsolete)

Etymology

The adjective form of spleen, borrowed from Late Latin spleneticus, from Latin splen. Anger was traditionally believed to originate from the fluids of the spleen.

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /spl??n?t?k/

  Rhymes: -?t?k

Adjective

splenetic (comparative more splenetic, superlative most splenetic)

1. Bad-tempered, irritable, peevish, spiteful, habitually angry.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:angry, Thesaurus:irritable
2. (biology) Related to the spleen.
   • 1879, Sir Samuel White Baker, Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879

     I have already described the general protuberance of the abdomen among the children throughout the Messaria and the Carpas districts, all of whom are more or less affected by splenetic diseases.

Derived terms

• splenetically (adv)
• splenetical

Related terms

• lienal
• spleenful
• spleeny
• splenic
• splenitive

Translations

Noun

splenetic (plural splenetics)

1. (archaic) A person affected with spleen.