Dictionary

spuriosity en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /spjʊə.ɹiˈɒ.sə.ti/ (Received-Pronunciation)
• /spjɔ-/ (General-American)
• /-ɾi/ (General-American)
• /spjʊ.ɹiˈɑ.sə.ti/ (General-American)
• (Southern-England) audio
• /spʊ-/ (General-American)

Etymology

From spurious + -osity.

Meanings

1. (countable, rare, uncountable) Spuriousness.
   • So she made Sir John write to the "Times" to command the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being to put a tax on long words:— […] A heavy tax on words over four syllables, as heterodoxy, spontaneity, spiritualism, spuriosity, &c. [1862 August – 1863 March, Charles Kingsley, chapter IV, in The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby, London; Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Macmillan and Co., published 1863, →OCLC, page 168:
   • This is the sort of struggle which proves a man's metal, and declares it sterling or counterfeit. No spuriosity, no charlatanry can stand this fiery alembic of hard-wrought and exquisite calculation, in which one mathematic point or unit misplaced destroys the whole chain of reasoning, and proves the candidate a blunderer. 1874 June 1, Francis Barham, “On Swedenborg’s Theology. An Unpublished Fragment.”, in The Intellectual Repository and New Jerusalem Magazine (Enlarged Series; XXI), volume XLIX (Entire Work), number 246, London: General Conference of the New Church, […] [a]nd sold by James Speirs, […], →OCLC, page 263:
   • Clearly, there is no solution to the problem of spurious center-of-mass motion in the nonseparable case. Mathematically it is not even a well-defined problem. The only course is to be very careful not to draw conclusions which may be dependent on the spuriosity of the states in question. In particular, the spuriosity should be checked by evaluating <Hₑₘ> for the final eigenstates. 2013, R. R. Whitehead, A. Watt, B. J. Cole, I. Morrison, “Computational Methods for Shell-model Calculations”, in Michel Baranger, Erich Vogt, editors, Advances in Nuclear Physics, volume 9, New York, N.Y.: Plenum Press, →DOI, →ISBN, page 168:
   • Ye are next to aſſure all Perſons, vvho are ſo kind as to give you Audience, that to prevent the leaſt Suſpicion of Spurioſity, they may ſee every Letter I have ever printed of Mr. Pope’s in his Ovvn Hand-VVriting, […] 1736, Alexander Pope, “To the Sisters”, in Mr Pope’s Literary Correspondence, volume IV, London: […] E[dmund] Curll, […], →OCLC, page iv:
   • The supposition that authors have a preternatural ability to detect spuriosity in writing is as false as the comparable belief that their literary practices make them unerring as literary critics. 2001, K. K. Ruthven, Faking Literature, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 108:
2. (countable, rare, uncountable) That which is spurious; something false or illegitimate.
   • In their study of American extremist groups, John George and Laird Wilcox note that although distorting or actually fabricating quotations is commonly employed by extremists, "American leftists have used spuriosities of that sort sparingly, [while] groups and individuals on the far right have raised such utilizations to a high art form." 2004, Janice M. Irvine, Talk about Sex: The Battles over Sex Education in the United States, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 225, endnote 3 to chapter 3:
   • Nipper […] had abruptly decided that there was dirty work afoot and this spuriosity the villain. Uttering foolishly futile yaps of challenge—his sure undoing—Nipper heroically launched himself against the foe […] 1934, Ernest Bramah, The Bravo of London:
   • Haydn spuriosities were generated by demand for [Joseph] Haydn's works and by manuscript circulation. In genres like keyboard sonatas, piano trios and songs, where manuscript circulation was light, there were relatively few spuriosities. 1983, John Spitzer, Authorship and Attribution in Western Art Music (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation), Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University, →OCLC, page 204:

Forms

Antonyms

truthfulness · genuineness · veracity · authenticity

Relateds

spuriousness · spuriously · spurious

Synonyms

falsity · inauthenticity