- superficial
- superficial, shallow, cursory, uncritical can mean lacking in depth, solidity, and comprehensiveness.Superficial applies chiefly to persons, their minds, their emotions, their attainments, or their utterances or writings, but it is also applicable to things (as circumstances, factors, conditions, or qualities). The term usually implies a concern with surface aspects or obvious features or an avoidance of all but these aspects or features{
he had time for no more than a superficial examination of the report
}{multiple superficial wounds of the left and right thigh . . . Profound wounds of right knee Hemingway
}{the tendency ... of prose drama is to emphasize the ephemeral and superficial; if we want to get at the permanent and universal we tend to express ourselves in verse— T. S. Eliot
}Often the term is definitely depreciative and adds implications of unpleasing qualities (as pretense, ostentation, slightness, lack of thoroughness, insignificance, or insincerity){the lecture was very superficial
}{our political theory is hopelessly sophomoric and superficial— Mencken
}{its treatment of what is one of the important themes of our day seems generally too slick and superficial to be taken seriously— Merle Miller
}Shallow regularly implies a lack of depth{a shallow stream
}{shallow breathing
}and when applied to persons, their knowledge, their reasoning, or their emotions, is almost invariably derogatory and differs little from superficial used derogatorily except in its freedom from implication of outward show or of apparent but not genuine significance{do you suppose this eternal shallow cynicism of yours has any real bearing on a nature like hers?— Shaw
}{he continued to prop up this utterly muddled man, this confused and shallow "philosopher," as the intellectual mentor of the Nazi movement— Shirer
}{people who are property-grabbers, shallow and callous egoists . . . are not capable of so noble and selfish a feeling as love— Salisbury
}Cursory stresses a lack of thoroughness or of care for details rather than a concentration on the obvious; it often also suggests haste and casualness{even from a cursory reading of the book, I judge that it is a very fine piece of work
}{knowing the nature of women, your cursory observations might prove to be more exacting . . . than my own— Terry Southern
}{the coffeehouse must not be dismissed with a cursory mention— Macaulay
}{as they worked, they cursed us— not with a common cursory curse, but with long, carefully thought-out, comprehensive curses— Jerome
}Uncritical implies a superficiality or shallowness unbefitting to a critic or sound judge, whether of literature or the arts or of more general matters (as data, statements, or events) which must be evaluated, related, estimated, or judged{an uncritical judgment of a book
}{she was absolutely uncritical, she believed everything— Audrey Barker
}{I would not have you so uncritical as to blame the Church or its clergy for what happened— Quiller— Couch
}Antonyms: radical (sense 1)
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
