Where does “captious” come from?
Captious comes from Middle French captieux, meaning inclined to find fault or quibble, derived from Latin captiosus with the sense of deceptive or fallacious.
captious (English): That captures; especially, designed to capture...
Definitions
- That captures; especially, designed to capture...
Ancestry of “captious”, step by step
captious traces back through two separate lines of ancestry.
via Latin captiosus
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Latin | captiosus | fallacious, deceptive; captious; harmful |
| 2 | Latin | captiō | deception, fraud, deceit, trick |
| 3 | Latin | -tiō | tion, -ation, -ing |
| 4 | Latin | dissertātiō | (spoken) dissertation, discourse, disquisition |
| 5 | Latin | dissertus | arranged, disposed; explained |
| 6 | Latin | disserere | second-person singular future passive indicative... |
| 7 | Latin | dis- | asunder, apart, in two; reversal, removal;... |
| 8 | Latin | calceus | shoe |
| 9 | Latin | calx | limestone; chalk; the finish line |
| 10 | Ancient Greek | χάλιξ | small stone, pebble; gravel, rubble |