captious

Adjective

1. That captures; especially, (of an argument, words etc.) designed to capture or entrap in misleading arguments; sophistical.
   • […]I know I loue in vaine, ſtriue againſt hope : Yet in this captious, and intemible Siue I ſtill poure in the waters of my loue And lacke not to looſe ſtill[…] - 1605, William Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well,...
   • A captious queſtion, Sir, and your’s is one, Deſerves an anſwer ſimilar, or none. - 1786, William Cowper, “Tirocinium: Or, A Review of Schools”, in Poems, 2nd edition, volume II, London: J. Johnson, page 338:
   • Were you aware that in your discourse last Sunday you attributed the captious Problem of the Sadducees to the Pharisees, as a proof of the obscure and sensual doctrines of the latter? - 1815 March 24, Samuel Taylor...

   Synonyms: tricky thorny sophistical

2. Having a disposition to find fault unreasonably or to raise petty objections; cavilling, nitpicky.
   • ...not an irritable word had escaped him; and as every captious conclusion and petulant observation had been in days past always attributed, very justly, by Isabella either to the dyspepsia, brought on by his grief for...
   • But Peter Petrovich did not accept this retort. On the contrary, he became all the more captious and irritable, as though he were just hitting his stride. - 1968, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, translated by Sidney Monas, Crime...
   • The "Our Bold" column, nitpicking at errors in other periodicals, can look merely captious, and its critics often seem to be wildly and collectively wrong-headed. - 2009 January 24, Anne Karpf, The Guardian:

   Synonyms: carping critical faultfinding hypercritical nitpicky