PRETENSION • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Pretension

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/pritˈɛnʃən/ Listen

Pretension

noun

A false or unsupportable quality. Synonyms: pretence, pretense.

The advancing of a claim. "The town still puts forward pretensions as a famous resort"

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.

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"Pretension" Quotes from Famous Books

... I had seen many country homes of pretension and even luxury, I never saw one that appealed to me more on the ground of promise and, after a fashion, of partial fulfillment. It was so unpretentiously pretentious, so really grand in a limited and yet poetic way. Exteriorly its placement, on a rise of ground commanding that vast sweep ...

— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... Jones—are the work of men claiming or believing themselves to be initiated into Rosicrucianism or other occult systems of a kindred nature and as such in possession of peculiar and exclusive knowledge. This pretension may at once be dismissed as an absurdity; nothing is easier than for anyone to make a compound out of Jewish Cabalism and Eastern theosophy and to label it Rosicrucianism, but no proof whatever exists of any affiliation ...

— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... movements of a harmless quadruped, or by the flight of a bird, unaware that before sunset it would be the eagle's portion. Other sovereigns have supported their tyranny over a down-trodden people by an arrogant pretension to an authority derived in a ...

— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... when we did not instinctively despise a sham, and honor a genuine person, thing, or claim. In mere social pretension not built upon character, intelligence, education, or gentle birth, we felt no interest. I do not remember having been taught this, in so many words. ...

— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various

... "This pretension caused no dispute; England never thought of making any, except as to the lands situated towards the source of the Ohio, in that part where she had given the name ...

— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various

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