Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Claiming or demanding a position of distinction or merit, especially when unjustified.
- adj. Making or marked by an extravagant outward show; ostentatious. See Synonyms at showy.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Pretended; unfounded; false.
- Full of pretension, or claims to greater excellence or importance than the truth warrants; attempting to pass for more than the actual worth or importance; making an exaggerated outward show.
Wiktionary
- adj. Marked by an unwarranted claim to importance or distinction.
- adj. Ostentatious; intended to impress others.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Full of pretension; disposed to lay claim to more than is one's; presuming; assuming.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. making claim to or creating an appearance of (often undeserved) importance or distinction
- adj. (of a display) tawdry or vulgar
- adj. intended to attract notice and impress others
Etymologies
- From French prétentieux, from prétention, from Latin praetensus ("false or hypocritical profession"), past participle of praetendō. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“One thing I noticed about the comments on your blog is that folks often use the term pretentious to describe a restaurant.”
“Although he finds the phrase "pretentious," he realized he was bearing witness so that peoples' suffering "will not have happened in vain.”
“It's absolutely true "pretentious" is thrown around quite a lot, and often in a way that isn't an argument about the literature, but about the hypothetical motives of its creators or its appreciators.”
“He studied the row of buttons on the trendy contraption that some would call a coffee machine and he called a pretentious piece of pain-in-the-ass machinery.”
“What made it even more pretentious is that that appeared IN THE CONTENTS PAGE, despite there being nothing but those words there.”
“Really, how much more pretentious is Obama going to get before he just gets down to the business of the American people?”
“It's a provocative premise, but mired in pretentious posturing and glacial pacing, though enlivened by terrific acting by all of the twitchy, edgy principals.”
“Later we get more on the wisdom of trees, written in pretentious tones like this:”
“To call a work pretentious is to call into question its writer very commitment to their craft, to suggest, with no real evidence, that they are driven, at heart, by a shallow egotism.”
“Such debauchery of science in the name of pretentious ‘art’ offends all my sensibilities.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pretentious’.
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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3/4 year Vocab List
voracious, indiscriminate, eminent, steeped, replete, awe, buffoon, abound, technology, prognosticate, automaton, matron and 96 more...
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3/4 year Vocab List
voracious, indiscriminate, eminent, steeped, replete, awe, buffoon, abound, technology, prognosticate, automaton, matron and 96 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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GRE
predilection, explicit, appeal, supplication, appealing, enchanting, ovation, pertinent, apropos, opportunely, applicable, germane and 381 more...
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Adjectives
sagacious, average, angry, mad, crazy, giant, ugly, pretty, happy, sad, lonely, solitary and 119 more...
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Bright Folk
Some words I come across in my legal studies, though not really legal jargon. And the usage doesn't shout, "hey, I think I'm smart", just simply, "this is what applies in this context."
verbose, inter alia, ostentatious, usurp, presumptuous, anachronistic, unfettered, sine qua non, amenable, subversive, irreducible, penumbra and 28 more...
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Lesson 15
complement, component, conjure, emphasize, homage, impromptu, lush, medley, oblige, pretentious, prowess, rustic and 3 more...
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pedantic words
Busie old foole, unruly Sunne,..Sawcy pedantique wretch, goe chide Late schooleboyes.
pedagogic, schoolmasterly, academic, bookish, donnish, dry as dust, dryasdust, pedantic, erudite, formal, inkhorn, learned and 65 more...
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15
complement, component, conjure, emphasize, homage, impromptu, lush, medley, oblige, pretentious, prowess, rustic and 3 more...
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Lesson 15
Complement, Component, Conjure, Emphasize, Homage, Impromptu, Lush, medley, oblige, pretentious, rustic, subtle and 2 more...
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SAT Words
Know these common SAT words
taciturn, docile, expedient, superfluous, eclectic, impromptu, dogmatic, invidious, rhetoric, tenacious, pretentious, parsimony and 14 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for pretentious.
johnmperry Can't be that incomparable, I can't even remember it! I remember most of them, but that one not. Jun 26, 2008
skipvia Which he stole from the incomparable Fawlty Towers, "The Psychiatrist" episode. Jun 26, 2008
johnmperry Pretentious? Moi?
- great line from Eddie Murphy Jun 26, 2008