specious

1. 1.

   plausible but false

   “a specious claim”

   “spurious inferences”

   Synonymsspurious

   Similarfalse
2. 2.

   based on pretense; deceptively pleasing

   “the gilded and perfumed but inwardly rotten nobility”

   “meretricious praise”

   “a meretricious argument”

   Synonymsgildedmeretriciousglossy

   Similarinsincere

Other forms of specious

comparative

speciouser·

superlative

speciousest·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about specious

What does specious mean?

specious means "plausible but false". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in specious?

specious has 2 syllables: spe-cious. The stress falls on "spe". In IPA it is /ˈspiʃəs/.

What is another word for specious?

Close synonyms include spurious, gilded, meretricious, glossy. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is specious a common word?

specious is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.