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Superficial vs Shallow vs Cursory vs Uncritical

Superficial, shallowcursoryuncritical 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.

Often the term is definitely depreciative and adds implications of unpleasing qualities (as pretense, ostentation, slightness, lack of thoroughness, insignificance, or insincerity).

Shallow regularly implies a lack of depth 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.

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.

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.