Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Pretender   /pritˈɛndər/   Listen
Pretender

noun
1.
A claimant to the throne or to the office of ruler (usually without just title).
2.
A person who makes deceitful pretenses.  Synonyms: fake, faker, fraud, imposter, impostor, pseud, pseudo, role player, sham, shammer.
3.
A person who professes beliefs and opinions that he or she does not hold in order to conceal his or her real feelings or motives.  Synonyms: dissembler, dissimulator, hypocrite, phoney, phony.






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





"Pretender" Quotes from Famous Books



... Plymouth to defend some citizens of that town who had become involved in a riot on the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. It was the custom in the New England towns to observe this day with a mock procession, in which effigies representing the Pope, the Old Bad One, and James the Pretender, were carried through the streets to be consigned at the end to a bonfire. In this instance violence was done by some of the participants; windows were smashed, gates were broken down, etc. Mr. Otis conducted the defense, showing that the arrested persons taking ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... know that he is a pretender to the throne of Babbiano? You will remember that he is cousin ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... climbing and asserting itself above the falsely named "pink Gloire"; Reine Marie Henriette— which, grown by everybody, is perhaps the worst rose in the world. Gloire de Dijon rampant smothered the pretender and covered the most of its mildewing buds from sight; to be conquered in its turn by the sheer beauty of Marechal Niel, whose every yellow star, bold on its stalk as greenhouses can grow it, shamed all feebler yellows. Devoniensis flung its sprays down from the thatch. La France and Ulrich ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... concur in asserting that that prince was elected by the clergy and the people. Whatever may be the historical truth of the design, Pushkin has given us in this tragedy a dramatic picture full of spirit, of passion, of character, and of life; and some of the personages, particularly those of the pretender Dimitri, and the heroine Marina, are sketched with a vigorous and flowing pencil. The form of this play is ostensibly Shakspearian; but it appears to us to resemble less the works of Shakspeare himself, than some of the more successful imitations of the great dramatist's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... pin, he punished the offender by pursuing him around the schoolroom, sticking a pin into his shoulder whenever he could overtake him. And he had a fearful leather strap, which was sometimes used even upon the shrinking palm of a little girl. If he should find out that I was a pretender and deceiver, as I knew that I was, I could not guess what might happen to me. He never did, however. I was left unmolested in the ignorance which I deserved. But I never liked the girl who did my sums, and I fancied she had a ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom


More quotes...



Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com