specious

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The Word of the Day for October 26 is:

specious   \SPEE-shuss\   adjective 
     1 : having deceptive attraction or allure 
    *2 : having a false look of truth or genuineness : sophistic

Example sentence:
     From the get-go Shelly felt that Clark's claim was specious, but he 
insisted he was telling the truth and she couldn't at first prove otherwise.

Did you know?
     "Appearances can be deceptive." "Things are not always as they seem." Like 
these familiar proverbs, the word "specious" attests that English speakers can 
be a skeptical lot when it comes to trusting outward appearances. "Specious" 
traces to the Latin word "speciosus," meaning "beautiful" or "plausible," and 
Middle English speakers used it to mean "visually pleasing." But by the 17th 
century, "specious" had begun to suggest an attractiveness that was superficial 
or deceptive, and, subsequently, the word's neutral "pleasing" sense faded into 
obsolescence.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.



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