Pretentious

//pɹɪˈtɛn.t͡ʃəs// adj

adj ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Motivated by an inappropriate, excessive, or unjustified desire to impress others.

    "Her dress was obviously more pretentious than comfortable."

  2. 2
    Marked by an unwarranted claim to importance or distinction.

    "Their song titles are pretentious in the context of their basic lyrics."

Adjective
  1. 1
    intended to attract notice and impress others wordnet
  2. 2
    making claim to or creating an appearance of (often undeserved) importance or distinction wordnet
  3. 3
    (of a display) tawdry or vulgar wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
artygrandiloquenthighfalutingostentatioussententiousvain

Example

More examples

"The people who come on the Maury Povich show often make pretentious claims about their lovers cheating on them."

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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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.