Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




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








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Pretension" Quotes from Famous Books



... foibles of a tiny German principality. Now, having changed all that, and having forced the Knickerbockers from their old places of vantage, the plutocrats reign supreme. To a mind capable of being saddened by human materialism, pretension, braggadocio, it is all very much the same sort of affair. Our republic should be ashamed of an aristocracy founded on either money or birth, and that thousands of its citizens are not only unashamed of such systems, but really glory in them, is merely another proof of how ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... Jacobinism brings with it Caesarism; the rule of the tongue leads to the rule of the sword. Democracy and liberty are not one but two. A republic supposes a high state of morals, but no such state of morals is possible without the habit of respect; and there is no respect without humility. Now the pretension that every man has the necessary qualities of a citizen, simply because he was born twenty-one years ago, is as much as to say that labor, merit, virtue, character, and experience are to count for nothing; and we destroy humility when we proclaim that a man becomes ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... was, for one of the theatrical players is a lady lodger of ours. She was unfairly supplanted by some insignificant young upstart and, of course, the public, always knowing true talent from shallow pretension, broke up the seats and pelted the manager with it along ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... work may retain it. We may still feel that we have no right to judge severely of what was not, at first, intended to come before our judgement at all. This of course applies only to those compositions, which indicate, by something within themselves, this freedom from the pretension of authorship. And such are most of those to which we are now bespeaking ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... a leading part in the location and establishment of the Water Works. Anxious to effect an improvement in the business architecture of the city, in which Cleveland was so far behind cities of less pretension, he projected and carried on far towards completion the Case Block, which stands to-day the largest and most noticeable business building in the city, and which contains one of the finest public halls in the ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin


More quotes...



Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com