PRETENSION

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does pretension mean? 

• PRETENSION (noun)
  The noun PRETENSION has 3 senses:

1. a false or unsupportable quality

2. the advancing of a claim

3. the quality of being pretentious (behaving or speaking in such a manner as to create a false appearance of great importance or worth)

  Familiarity information: PRETENSION used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PRETENSION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A false or unsupportable quality

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

pretence; pretense; pretension

Hypernyms ("pretension" is a kind of...):

artificiality (the quality of being produced by people and not occurring naturally)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The advancing of a claim

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Context example:

the town still puts forward pretensions as a famous resort

Hypernyms ("pretension" is a kind of...):

claim (an assertion of a right (as to money or property))

Derivation:

pretend (put forward a claim and assert right or possession of)

Sense 3

Meaning:

The quality of being pretentious (behaving or speaking in such a manner as to create a false appearance of great importance or worth)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

largeness; pretension; pretentiousness

Hypernyms ("pretension" is a kind of...):

unnaturalness (the quality of being unnatural or not based on natural principles)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "pretension"):

ostentation (pretentious or showy or vulgar display)

 Context examples 

No, said Darcy, I have made no such pretension.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

But I thought Werter himself a more divine being than I had ever beheld or imagined; his character contained no pretension, but it sank deep.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

What a launch in life I think it now, on looking back, to be so mean and servile to a man of such parts and pretensions!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The manor-house of Ferndean was a building of considerable antiquity, moderate size, and no architectural pretensions, deep buried in a wood.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It suited Mary best to think Henrietta the one preferred on the very account of Charles Hayter, whose pretensions she wished to see put an end to.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

A little upstart, vulgar being, with her Mr. E., and her caro sposo, and her resources, and all her airs of pert pretension and underbred finery.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Open, candid, artless, guileless, with affections strong but simple, forming no pretensions, and knowing no disguise.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

I can remember that they were evidently fond of his society; and with such encouragement, a man like Crawford, lively, and it may be, a little unthinking, might be led on to—there could be nothing very striking, because it is clear that he had no pretensions: his heart was reserved for you.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Because he believes many people pretend to more admiration of the beauties of nature than they really feel, and is disgusted with such pretensions, he affects greater indifference and less discrimination in viewing them himself than he possesses.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

He added, that upon the confidence of some merit, the war being at an end, he went to Rome, and solicited at the court of Augustus to be preferred to a greater ship, whose commander had been killed; but, without any regard to his pretensions, it was given to a boy who had never seen the sea, the son of Libertina, who waited on one of the emperor’s mistresses.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)