Meaning & use
spurious
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Meanings
adjectivecomparable
Seeming to be real or true but actually false, because it rests on faulty facts or reasoning.
Grammar: Used before a noun (a spurious claim) or after a linking verb (the argument is spurious); usually applied to ideas, not people.
Patterns
- a spurious claim
- spurious reasoning
The lawyer dismissed the accusation as spurious.
They won the case by showing that the evidence was spurious.
He made a spurious argument about the new tax.
adjectivebefore a nountechnical
In statistics, appearing to show a link between two things when the link is really caused by something else.
Grammar: Appears before a noun in this sense: a spurious correlation.
Patterns
- a spurious correlation
Ice cream sales and drowning deaths show a spurious correlation, since both rise in hot weather.
The study warned that the pattern could be a spurious result.
Word forms
| comparative | more spurious |
|---|---|
| superlative | most spurious |
Common combinations
- spurious claim
- The company made a spurious claim about its product's safety.
- spurious correlation
- The graph shows a spurious correlation between the two trends.
- spurious argument
- His spurious argument fooled no one.
- spurious accusation
- She denied the spurious accusation.
- on spurious grounds
- The petition was rejected on spurious grounds.
Synonyms and how they differ
- false
- False is the plain, general word, but spurious suggests something that only looks genuine or sound.
- bogus
- Bogus is informal and implies a deliberate fake, while spurious can be an honest mistake in reasoning.
- fallacious
- Fallacious applies to flawed reasoning specifically, whereas spurious can describe any false thing that seems real.
- counterfeit
- Counterfeit usually describes a physical copy such as money, but spurious is more often used for ideas and evidence.
Opposites
Word family
- spuriously adverb
- in a false but convincing-looking way
- spuriousness noun
- the quality of being false
Commonly confused: spurious or specious? spurious or superfluous?
spurious vs specious
Specious means seemingly sound but misleading, and is often used for arguments; spurious more broadly means fake or false.
spurious vs superfluous
Superfluous means more than is needed and has nothing to do with being false.
Practice
The scientist warned that the apparent link between shoe size and reading ability was ___: both depend on a child's age.
Choose one answer.
A spurious link seems real but is caused by a third factor, here age. The other adjectives do not describe false or misleading connections.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “spurious”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.