Meaning & use
specious
Last updated
Meaning
adjectivenot comparableformal
Seeming reasonable or true at first, but actually false or misleading.
Grammar: Not usually used with 'more' or 'most'; describes a quality that is either present or not.
Patterns
- a specious argument
- specious reasoning
- specious claim
The lawyer's specious argument convinced the jury at first, but the evidence proved it wrong.
He gave a specious excuse for being late, and no one believed him.
The advertisement made specious claims about the product's health benefits.
Common combinations
- specious argument
- The politician's specious argument about the economy fooled some voters.
- specious reasoning
- Her specious reasoning led her to a completely wrong conclusion.
- specious claim
- The company was fined for making specious claims about its drugs.
- specious distinction
- He drew a specious distinction between lying and withholding the truth.
Synonyms and how they differ
- misleading
- Misleading means giving a wrong idea, often unintentionally; specious suggests a deliberate attempt to seem convincing while being false.
- fallacious
- Fallacious means based on a mistaken belief or logic; specious emphasizes the superficial appearance of truth.
- plausible
- Plausible means seeming reasonable and possibly true; specious means it seems reasonable but is actually false, so it is stronger and negative.
Opposites
Word family
- speciousness noun
- The quality of seeming true but being false.
- speciously adverb
- In a way that seems reasonable but is false.
Commonly confused: specious or spacious? specious or suspicious?
specious vs spacious
Spacious means having a lot of space; specious means falsely convincing. They sound similar but have very different meanings.
specious vs suspicious
Suspicious means causing a feeling that something is wrong; specious means appearing true but actually false. A specious argument might make you suspicious.
Practice
Choose the correct word: The report was full of ______ statistics that looked impressive but were completely made up.
Choose one answer.
Specious means seeming true but actually false, which fits statistics that look impressive but are made up. Spacious means roomy, suspicious means causing distrust, and precious means valuable.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “specious”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.