captious
captious — 形容詞
- captiouspositive
- more captiouscomparative
- most captioussuperlative
1. Someone who is captious always looks for small, unimportant mistakes to complain
吹毛求疵的
對瑣碎小事過分挑剔、愛找碴的
Someone who is captious always looks for small, unimportant mistakes to complain about, usually in an ill-natured or petty way rather than to be genuinely helpful.
Sana's captious boss returned every report marked with comma corrections, never addressing the actual arguments.
Sana 那位吹毛求疵的老闆把每份報告都退回，上面只標了逗號錯誤，從不討論實際論點。
captious + focusing on trivial errors
Tunde dreaded his captious aunt's visits — she criticised everything he cooked, down to the salt.
Tunde 很怕他那位吹毛求疵的阿姨來訪——對方對他煮的每道菜都能挑剔，連鹽放多少都有話說。
Even the chair admitted that Greta's captious objections had wasted half of the planning meeting.
就連主席都承認 Greta 那些吹毛求疵的異議浪費了規劃會議一半的時間。
The captious reviewer dismissed the novel over a single misspelled character name on page three.
那位吹毛求疵的書評人因為第三頁有個角色名字拼錯了一個字母，就把整本小說貶得一文不值。
Cyrus found his captious flatmate exhausting — nothing was ever clean enough or quiet enough.
Cyrus 覺得他那位吹毛求疵的室友讓人筋疲力盡——永遠不夠乾淨、永遠不夠安靜。
- critical
much broader; can be constructive or negative. 'Critical' does not imply pettiness.
- caviling
similarly formal; focuses on raising trivial objections in debate. Slightly rarer than 'captious'.
- carping
implies persistent, nagging complaint. Less intellectual than 'captious'; more emotional.
- fault-finding
more direct and less literary; can describe any habit of looking for mistakes.
- appreciative
expresses approval and gratitude rather than criticism.
- uncritical
accepting without finding fault; can be neutral or positive.
文法句型
captious + noun (a captious critic)
be + captious (her remarks were captious)
用法筆記
Formal or literary register. Unlike 'critical,' which can be neutral or constructive, 'captious' always describes an ill-natured habit of finding fault with insignificant details.