Pretension
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Related to pretensions: exhorter
Pretension
See also Hypocrisy.
Prey (See QUARRY.)
Absolonvain, officious parish clerk. [Br. Lit.: Canterbury Tales, “Miller’s Tale”]
de his language inordinately disproportionate to his thought. [Br. Lit.: Love’s Labour’s Lost]
king whose pomposity provoked a fatal brawl with his general. [Br. Lit.: Walsh Modern, 96]
pretends to great wealth; jewels are counterfeit. [Br. Lit.: Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, Walsh Modern, 105]
stiff-necked Roman aristocrat; contemptuous of the common people. [Br. Lit.: Coriolanus]
shallow industrialist’s wife ostentatiously gallivants about Europe. [Am. Lit.: Dodsworth]
ostentatiously and fastidiously examines prisoners. [Br. Lit.: Much Ado About Nothing]
style overly rich with alliteration, figures, and Latinisms. [Br. Lit.: Euphues, Espy, 127]
inhabited by pretenders to knowledge. [Fr. Lit.: Pantagruel]
parvenu grandiosely affects gentleman’s mien. [Fr. Lit.: The Bourgeois Gentilhomme]
their suitors had to be flamboyant. [Fr. Lit.: Les Precieuses Ridicules]
self-deluded tavern-keeper boasts about his upper-class past to maintain a show of importance. [Am. Drama: Eugene O’Neill A Touch of the Poet in Benét, 737]
symbol of affectation; flower of September. [Flower Symbolism: Flora Symbolica, 175; Kunz, 330]
boastful villain of affected sentiment and knowledge. [Br. Lit.: All’s Well That Ends Well]
enters university “posing as moneyed aristocrat.” [Br. Lit.: Pendennis]
nouveau-riche couple strive for social eminence. [Fr. Lit.: Proust Remembrance of Things Past]
indicates affectation. [Flower Symbolism: Flora Symbolica, 178]
of affects grandeur; kingdom is but a village. [Fr. Legend: Brewer Dictionary, 1173]