pretentious
Meanings
Adjective
- making claim to or creating an appearance of (often undeserved) importance or distinction
- "a pretentious country house"
- "a pretentious fraud"
- "a pretentious scholarly edition"
- intended to attract notice and impress others
Adjective Satellite
- (of a display) tawdry or vulgar
Adj
- Motivated by an inappropriate, excessive, or unjustified desire to impress others.
- Marked by an unwarranted claim to importance or distinction.
Origin / 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.
Synonyms
affected, effete, fey, highfalutin, hoity-toity, ostentatious, overrefined, pansified, precious, pretentious, recherché, smug, stagy, stilted, theatrical, Woosterian
Antonyms
demure, formal, humble, modest, natural, priggish, prim, prudish, puritanical, Quakerish, unostentatious, unpretentious
Scrabble Score: 13
pretentious is a valid Scrabble (US) TWL wordpretentious is a valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
pretentious is a valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary