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pretense

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Middle French pretensse, from Late Latin praetēnsus, past participle of Latin praetendō (“to pretend”), from prae- (“before”) + tendō (“to stretch”); see pretend.

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /ˈpɹiːtɛns/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Hyphenation: pre‧tense

Noun

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pretense (countable and uncountable, plural pretenses) (American spelling, British pretence)

  1. (countable or uncountable) The action of pretending; false or simulated show or appearance; false or hypocritical assertion or representation.
    He visited the king under the pretense of friendliness.
    "Lady Little", the title that she used, was just a pretense.
    She appeared to weep uncontrollably, but it was all pretense.
    • 1771, [Oliver] Goldsmith, “George II. (Continued.)”, in The History of England, from the Earliest Times to the Death of George II. […], volume IV, London: […] T[homas] Davies, […]; [T.] Becket and [P. A.] De Hondt; and T[homas] Cadell, […], →OCLC, pages 365–366:
      Great armaments were, therefore, put on foot in Moravia and Bohemia, while the elector of Saxony, under a pretence of military parade, drew together about ſixteen thouſand men, which were poſted in a ſtrong ſituation at Pirna.
    • 1870 October 20, The Revolution, volume VI, number 16 (whole 146), New York, N.Y., page 245, column 2:
      The London Saturday Review pays the following well-merited compliment to two American lady authors: “Very few of even our best writers can compass a book for the young which shall be all that it ought to be, avoiding, on the one hand, extravagant sensationality and a standard so high as to be outside human nature altogether; on the other, vapid silliness, which no grown girl can accept as fitting food for her mind at all, and which irritates, as all pretense and make-believe must. […]”
    • 1915, G[eorge] A. Birmingham [pseudonym; James Owen Hannay], chapter I, in Gossamer, New York, N.Y.: George H. Doran Company, →OCLC, pages 10–11:
      There is an hour or two, after the passengers have embarked, which is disquieting and fussy. [...] Passengers wander restlessly about or hurry, with futile energy, from place to place. Pushing men hustle each other at the windows of the purser's office, under pretence of expecting letters or despatching telegrams.
    • 1995, Charlie Lewis, Peter Mitchell, Children′s Early Understanding Of Mind: Origins And Development, page 281:
      In pilot work we have used the method described in Experiment 2 on children′s memory for the content of their own false beliefs and pretence and asked them to differentiate between belief and pretence.
    • 2005, Plato, translated by Lesley Brown, Sophist, page 231b:
      That part of education that turned up in the latest phase of our argument, the cross-examination of the empty pretence of wisdom, is none other, we must declare, than the true-blooded kind of sophistry.
  2. (uncountable) Affectation or ostentation of manner.
    She was a plain-speaking woman without a hint of pretense.
  3. Intention or purpose not real but professed.
    with only a pretense of accuracy
  4. An unsupported claim made or implied.
    • 1899 September – 1900 July, Joseph Conrad, chapter II, in Lord Jim: A Tale, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1900, →OCLC, page 9:
      He was gentlemanly, steady, tractable, with a thorough knowledge of his duties; and in time, when yet very young, he became chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by those events of the sea that show in the light of day the inner worth of a man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal the quality of his resistance and the secret truth of his pretences, not only to others but also to himself.
    • 1968, Gerard Radnitzky · · ‎Snippet view, Contemporary Schools of Metascience, page 114:
      They wished to demask hidden metaphysics, to demask the false pretenses of sentences purportively descriptive but de facto metaphysical or evaluative.
  5. An insincere attempt to reach a specific condition or quality.
  6. (obsolete) Intention; design.

Synonyms

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Translations

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Further reading

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Anagrams

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Spanish

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Verb

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pretense

  1. inflection of pretensar:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative
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