A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (up to 1700)
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About this entry:
First published 2001 (DOST Vol. IX).
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.
Quotation dates: 1450-1452, 1627-1680
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Specious, Speciose, adj. [ME and e.m.E. speciose (a1400), specious (1402), MF spécieux, -euse (14th c. in Larousse), L. speciōsus.] a. absol. as noun. A beautiful person, woman. b. Of a building: Splendid, beautiful. c. Of a name, with pejorative connotations: Plausible, apparently worthy but not so in reality. —a. c1450-2 Howlat 733 (A).
Haile speciose [B. specious], most specifyet with the spiritualis … Haile our hope and our helpe —b. 1627 Rep. Parishes 198.
Our kirk of Ednem is nathar spacious nor specious, for it is not able to conteine the halfe of our peopill … [and] it is not so weill wpholden as any barne or byr 1680 Edinb. B. Rec. X 419.
Thomas Robertsone … to build … ane beautiful and specious exchainge of seventie foott square … and it is … declaired … that the samen exchainge togither with the walks both covered and uncovered and the open court thereof and the entrie thereto sall belong and perteine to us [etc.] [sc. the Town Council] —c. 1651 Rec. Kirk Scotl. 638.
These, that, … under the specious name of the godly pairty, have carried on a devilish design of undoing kirk and state
