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Pretension   /pritˈɛnʃən/   Listen
Pretension

noun
1.
A false or unsupportable quality.  Synonyms: pretence, pretense.
2.
The advancing of a claim.  "The town still puts forward pretensions as a famous resort"
3.
The quality of being pretentious (behaving or speaking in such a manner as to create a false appearance of great importance or worth).  Synonyms: largeness, pretentiousness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Pretension" Quotes from Famous Books



... the rude equivalent of his generalising bark, the spaniel would have been a stranger, of humming to herself hard as a sign that nothing had happened to her. She had not, so to speak, fallen in; she had had no accident and had not got wet; this at any rate was her pretension until after she began a little to wonder if she mightn't, with or without exposure, have taken cold. She could at all events remember no time at which she had felt so excited, and certainly none—which was another ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... understood to provide their own attire. Moreover, there is now little varying of the programme, and, in consequence, little demand upon the stock wardrobe of the playhouse. Still, when in theatres of any pretension, entertainments in the nature of spectacles or pantomimes are in course of preparation, there is much stir in the wardrobe department. There are bales of cloth to be converted into apparel for the supernumeraries, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... third issue. It was of no consequence except that it contained what was probably the first attempt at that modern literary abortion, the composite novel. Also, it died too soon to publish Mark Twain's first verses of any pretension, though still of modest merit—"The Aged Pilot Man"—which were thereby ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Renaissance" in which it took place; when real devotion to all arts, sciences, and amenities of a higher civilisation went hand in hand with crime of the vilest and treachery of the basest description. Well might Barbarossa, and such as he, laugh to scorn the pretension that his Christian enemies were one whit better than were they, when they could point to the fact that, to serve a private revenge, a great Christian king could betray his co-religionists to their Moslem foes. Shamelessly did the Sea-wolves seek their prey wherever it was to be found; ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... evening I installed myself in the apartments. You must think that this was a fresh cause of chagrin, and created me more enemies. There are certain families who look upon the court as their hereditary domain: the Noailles was one of them. However, there is no grounds of pretension to such a right. Their family took its rise from a certain Adhemar de Noailles, of Toulouse, ennobled, according to all appearance, by the exercise of his charge in 1459. The grandfather of these Noailles was a domestic of M. de Turenne's, and his family was patronized at court by ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon


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