pretense

• pretence (British)
• prætense (archaic)

Borrowed from Middle French pretensse, from Late Latin praetēnsus, past participle of Latin praetendō (“to pretend”), from prae- (“before”) + tendō (“to stretch”); see pretend.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpɹiːtɛns/

• Audio (US)

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• Hyphenation: pre‧tense

pretense (countable and uncountable, plural pretenses) (American spelling)

1. (US) A false or hypocritical assertion, implication, or representation.

   under pretense of friendliness

2. Intention or purpose not real but professed.

   with only a pretense of accuracy

3. An unsupported claim made or implied.
4. An insincere attempt to reach a specific condition or quality.

• affectation denotes deception for the sake of escape from punishment or an awkward situation
• false pretense
• fiction
• imitation
• pretext
• sham
• subterfuge

• See also Thesaurus:pretext

• “pretense”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “pretense”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “pretense”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

• Petersen, pre-teens, preteens, terpenes

pretense

1. inflection of pretensar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative