What is captious?

What Does captious Mean

Capioso is an adjective that comes from a word that in Latin refers to the false or fallacious that is expressed with words or is part of a proposition or a doctrine .

On the other hand, the term also serves to refer to an argument or a question that serves to get an answer from the interlocutor; that is, as a form of provocation for the interlocutor to utter a response that may compromise him or her or that favors the purposes of the person making the expression.
Some sentences in which the term is found are: "The interviewer misled him with a leading question and the mayor confessed that he hired his son as an advisor" , "This is a captioning argument that seeks to confuse the population" , "It is about of a captivating movement that seduces young people with promises of freedom but ends up subjecting them to a leader ” .

A catch phrase usually implies a double meaning . One literal, which is presented as a unique meaning, and another that must be discovered between the lines and that can lead a person to expose it or say something that, in reality, they were not willing to confess.
A leading question can also play directly with the literal . A man leaves his house and finds his neighbor changing a tire on his car. Then he asks: "Do you want me to give you a hand?" Faced with the affirmative answer from his neighbor, he takes a plastic hand out of his pocket, hands it to him, and leaves. This humorous situation presents a trick question because it has a double intention.
Another similar example occurs when someone asks for a “glass of water” and, instead of receiving a glass with water inside, receives a glass made with (ice) water.
The aim of the catch phrases is to surprise the intelligence of the listeners and to generate in them a particular answer. In order to formulate them, it is necessary to take a characteristic of reality and express it in a confusing way, which allows a double interpretation. The interlocutor's options are two: take at face value what these words imply (getting to get the wrong message) or try to understand the true meaning of the sentence (having to grasp the irony hidden in the words).
Adjective forms similar to capioso
The adjective capioso is usually used to refer to speeches and reasoning that include a certain falsehood . These types of speeches are characterized by the fact that through a subtle chaining and a certain manipulation of language, they manage to lead the interlocutor to find himself in a situation that he could neither suspect nor foresee. They tend to be based on principles that are true at first glance but lead to false consequences.

There are several adjectives that could be considered similar to tricky, among them we can mention: malicious , devious, twisted or insidious . Although some differences can be established between one and the other, due to the nuance that each adjective contains, in general they could be used as synonyms .
However, it is interesting to establish the difference between an insidious speech and a captious one, by choosing two that are very similar. This difference resides in the fact that the first is presented in a seductive way, while the second dazzles the interlocutor and does not have time to realize the deception. In both cases, when the interlocutor wants to react, it is too late and is already part of a mess from which it will be very difficult to escape.
In any case, a chatty speech is used by someone who does not have clear intentions or who knows that the only way to obtain the result (the interlocutor's response) that they want is through deception and the pronunciation of a diffuse message.

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