captiousin a sentence
- The child is spoiled, captious, and insolent.
- Then the old woman trudged out to get a girl for Hungry Joe, dipping her captious head sadly, and returned with two big-bosomed beauties, one already undressed and the other in only a transparent pink half slip that she wiggled out of while sitting down.† (source)
- "I wish you'd learn to put the caps back on things properly when you're finished using them," she said in a tone she fully meant to sound captious.† (source)
- a captious and satirical nature
- And when a film did take a compassionate approach to homosexuality, the mainstream press could pounce on it with cavalier ignorance and captious contempt. (source)
- I cannot afford to be irritable and captious, nor to waste all my time in attacks. (source)
- For, say what you would, she was certainly acting very unfairly and captiously in all this.† (source)
- — too cheerful in my views to be captious.† (source)
- "A little too fond," said Mr. Featherstone, captiously.† (source)
- "That canoe may not belong to the cutter," said the captious seaman.† (source)
- Please don't be captious with me.† (source)
show 15 more with this conextual meaning
- And yet the time is come when one may speak in all sincerity and utter courtesy of the mistakes and shortcomings of Mr. Washington's career, as well as of his triumphs, without being thought captious or envious, and without forgetting that it is easier to do ill than well in the world.† (source)
- The honest old scholar suffered every abuse imaginable as a result of young Leo's intellectual obstinacy, captiousness, skepticism, contrariness, and cutting dialectical logic.† (source)
- "Now, my best of confidantes," said Richard, "I want my cousin Ada to understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about John Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back.† (source)
- There would have been the same inequality of lot, the same heaping up of favours here, of contumely there, the same generosity before justice, the same perpetual dilemmas, the same captious alteration of caresses and blows that we endure now.† (source)
- For the few first hours, the cares of the honest and warm-hearted girl were confined to the simple offices of satisfying the often-repeated demands which her younger associates made on her time and patience, under the pretences of hunger, thirst, and all the other ceaseless wants of captious and inconsiderate childhood.† (source)
- She was dry, rough, peevish, sharp, captious, almost venomous; all this in memory of her monk, whose widow she was, and who had ruled over her masterfully and bent her to his will.† (source)
- Georgiana, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and insolent carriage, was universally indulged.† (source)
- Chapter XVI: Why The National Vanity Of The Americans Is More Restless And Captious Than That Of The English.† (source)
- We shall not detain the reader with a description of the captious discussions that occupied the court for the first two hours, Judge Temple had impressed on the jury, in his charge, the necessity for dispatch on their part, recommending to their notice, from motives of humanity, the prisoners in the jail as the first objects of their attention.† (source)
- Those who remained yawned, talked, gossiped, consulted their tablets, and, all distinctions else forgotten, merged into but two classes—the winners, who were happy, and the losers, who were grum and captious.† (source)
- We are not boy and girl, to be captiously irritable, misled by every moment's inadvertence, and wantonly playing with our own happiness.† (source)
- It appears surprising at first sight that the same man transported to Europe suddenly becomes so sensitive and captious, that I often find it as difficult to avoid offending him here as it was to put him out of countenance.† (source)
- The consciousness of having done amiss, had exposed her to a thousand inquietudes, and made her captious and irritable to a degree that must have been—that had been—hard for him to bear.† (source)
- He grew by degrees less civil, put on more of the master, frequently found fault, was captious, and seem'd ready for an outbreaking.† (source)
- I know I love in vain, strive against hope; Yet in this captious and intenible sieve I still pour in the waters of my love, And lack not to lose still: thus, Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore The sun, that looks upon his worshipper, But knows of him no more.† (source)
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