pretentious
Pronunciation: /pɹɪˈtɛn.ʃəs/
The English word “pretentious” has 3 meanings listed here.
adjective
- Motivated by an inappropriate, excessive, or unjustified desire to impress others.
- Marked by an unwarranted claim to importance or distinction.
- Marked by pretense (not necessarily false pretense); intent upon success; ambitious.
Etymology
From French prétentieux, from prétention, from Latin praetēnsus (“false or hypocritical profession”), past participle of praetendō. Note that pretentious is spelled with a ‘t’, unlike related pretense, pretension. This is due to the French spelling: *-sious does not occur as an English suffix, though -sion and -tion both do.
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More English words
- pretensively
- pretensiveness
- pretentative
- pretentiosity
- pretentiously
- pretentiousness
- pretenure
- preter-human
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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.