Word: specious
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...WONDER whether I am the only reader of the Crimson who has fallen easy prey to the specious eloquence of old Izaak Walton, that arch-humbug who "babbles of green fields" in such a naive and charming way. Last spring I picked up "The Complete Angler," and at once devoting to Hades the august historians and orators of antiquity, I wanted to be a fisher of trout, I longed for brooks to conquer, I wished to commune with Nature. I have communed now, and some of the greenness has departed from those fields and from...
...delicate matter to tell a student that he is unfit for a scholarship when his rank is not based on definite marks. In other words, a false and injurious method is to be maintained, because, forsooth, instructors are afraid to speak the truth unless it is shielded in a specious disguise. It is strange that they do not see that it is all the same, whether they tell a student outright, or mark him and then tell him. However, special examinations for scholarships might be instituted...
...loss of pristine vigor; and after finding fault with the titles and subject-matter of these essays, he proceeds to detail to us some gratuitous information about Omar Khayyam, alias Chiam, whom he thinks Mr. Emerson has failed to treat with proper deference and appreciation. In spite of his specious remarks on Khayyam, appearances tend to prove that either our reviewer had a very slight acquaintance with Persian poets, or, happening to stumble on Mr. Fitzgerald's translation of Khayyam, tried to show an acquaintance and familiarity with Persian literature which he did not possess, or had thought...
...Cook now moved that it be left to the option of the colleges to row with or without coxswains, and supported his motion on what seems to us the specious ground that, because it was claimed by some that as good time could be made with coxswains as without, it was proper to allow those who thought they could make better time without coxswains to do so. All boats, we think, should be on the same footing, and the considerations in favor of coxswains are many besides that of time, which, in fact, is of small consequence...
...time" open to the coming generation a field for action wider and more varied than any it has been the fortune of human benefactors in the past ever to tread; and besides the primary duty of solving these problems there will always be need to counteract the "specious and superficial sophistry of the half-fledged demagogues of the hour." It is therefore at once a "dictate of prudence and a precept of patriotism," to guide aspiring youth so that they may adequately grapple with the difficulties before them, and show themselves in all respects to be "exalted models, both able...