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Daily reading of Gibbon, by the way, with assiduous note-taking whenever any interesting divergence from modern English usage comes to light, should in my view be compulsory for the Crackyhouse Crackyfag, to set us off from the .71-ers, who are more or less universally acknowledged to be a bunch of cunts.
Gibbon was not only a massive influence on the literary style of Jorge Luis Borges, several of whose books featured in Cracky's personal library. He has also, for some years, been the sole and exclusive reading matter of Iggy Pop, who has exerted an equally massive influence on my own good self, above all through the medium of his 1969 classic "I Wanna Be Your Dog".
I am also inclined to press - perhaps a tad less emphatically - for the introduction of compulsory thrice-weekly perusal of the website "The Word Detective", which offers this enlightening summary of the etymology and history of the term "specious":
There is a difference between "specious" and "spurious," although the distinction is gradually disappearing. What makes this slow-motion merger of the two words remarkable is that their meanings used to be nearly opposite.
"Spurious" comes from the Latin "spurius," meaning "illegitimate," and originally referred to a child born out of wedlock. "Spurious" broadened over the years to mean "of dubious origin," and more recently has come to mean "superficially resembling but not genuine."
"Specious," however, comes from the Latin "speciosus," meaning "fair or beautiful," and originally it was a compliment to call something "specious." The meaning of "specious" has shifted since the mid-17th century, however, and now it describes something which is deceptively attractive or superficially correct but is actually worthless.
Trying to pin down the difference between the two words is tricky. My sense is that a "specious" thing is more likely to be taken for genuine at first than is something "spurious." So a "specious" excuse may seem plausible and even convincing at first, while a "spurious" excuse would likely be dismissed as nonsensical or irrelevant right off the bat. In current use, "spurious" is a more flexible word than "specious," which, to answer your other question, is usually (but not always) applied to arguments.
