Spurious

//ˈspjʊə.ɹi.əs// adj

adj ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    False, not authentic, not genuine.

    "His argument was spurious and had no validity."

  2. 2
    Extraneous, stray; not relevant or wanted.

    "I tried to concentrate on the matter in hand, but spurious thoughts kept intruding."

  3. 3
    Bastardly, illegitimate. archaic

    "[…] who alſo in her prime of love, Spouſal embraces, vitiated with Gold, Though offer’d only, by the ſent conceiv’d Her ſpurious firſt-born; Treaſon againſt me?"

Adjective
  1. 1
    false or fake; not what it appears to be wordnet
  2. 2
    born out of wedlock wordnet
  3. 3
    plausible but false wordnet
  4. 4
    ostensibly valid, but not actually valid wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
counterfeitfalseinauthenticmisbegottenaffectedapocryphal

Example

More examples

"What the mayor is claiming is spurious and inflammatory."

Etymology

Borrowed from Late Latin spurius (“illegitimate, bastardly”), possibly related to sperno or from Etruscan.

Related phrases

spurious diphthongspurious infectionspurious language

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.