pretentious
- 01 C1 Advanced
making claims to be special or important when there is no reason for it.
making an unwarranted or exaggerated claim to distinction or merit.
Simple“He made pretentious claims about his family's history to sound more noble.”
In context“The author's pretentious tone throughout the preface suggested a level of expertise that the subsequent chapters failed to demonstrate.”
SynonymsostentatiousgrandiloquentAntonyms
“The narrative, however, centres on the fictional Bertrude, Lizzie’s sister, who is desperate to be noticed and included by the pretentious Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, whose idea of the perfect woman involves her looking near death.”
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.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.