Word: speciously
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...wanted a new man. The ostensible reason: the party needed an articulate, attractive spokesman to project vitality. Blind in one eye, squat of build, chubby of face and soporific as a speaker, Bliss, at 61, could hardly meet that requirement. Nonetheless, the rationale for wanting him out was somewhat specious. National chairmen rarely serve as showboats, and when a party controls the White House, its public image lives there. After Republican Governors and national committeemen protested, Nixon eased off. In January, he invited Bliss in for a chat, which ended with the announcement that the chairman would stay on indefinitely...
...other faculty members, for a pragmatic (does that mean practical or officious) exercise in the use of logical fallacies at the Faculty Meeting of 4 February. How grand it was to witness a pedagogical display of the honorable non sequitur, the venerable syllogism (in the sense of "a subtle, specious, or crafty argument"), the abundance of ad hominems and post hoc, ergo propter hoc's. "Eloquent" was the evaluation made by one speaker for the pedants who preceded him. No wonder Professor Beer trembles twice for his colleagues. Many, many thanks for an enlightening exposure to "academic freedom...
...faithless wife and conniving business agent who tricks him into painting the Da Vinci forgery, the narrator complains that he has been tipped into a "maelstrom of false marcheses, mercenary Bergamese whores, slippery Italian counts, witless German art experts, villainous Peruvian generals, paranoiac harpies, spiteful Russian cats, specious Polish wizards, spying pigeons, nosy janitors and ambitious Irish cops." He is also completely immersed in the unquestionably sprightly, if unusually perverse, world of three painters-Benjamin Littleboy, Leo Faber and himself -all three who are struggling haplessly to deal with the vagaries of their art and of their lives...
Simons also says that the mystique of infallibility "has not succeeded in saving the Church, its Popes, Bishops and other members from error and ignorance." Because of the church's claim to infallibility, "even her good arguments cease to be effective. Behind them outsiders suspect specious pleadings, not honest attempts to find the truth." Therefore, Simons concludes, "belief in infallibility is an obstacle to progress and the Gospel's effectiveness." It is also, more obviously, an obstacle to Christian unity. Simons argues that the demands of ecumenicism also justify the church's abandonment of the infallibility claim...
...York production of 1950, Alec Guinness brought an aura of mystery and suave authority to the part of Harcourt-Reilly, and Irene Worth as Celia evoked a taut sense of spiritual crisis. Without their skills, the confessional-psychiatric dialogue, which sends Celia off to her eventual anthill, sounds surprisingly specious and unconvincing. Suddenly more awkward than intriguing are Eliot's pomposities, like the stilted toast that the three Guardians intone to the future of their charges. And it no longer seems much fun to speculate on the writer's half-veiled allusions (do a pair of spectacles with...