PRETENTIOUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does pretentious mean? 

• PRETENTIOUS (adjective)
  The adjective PRETENTIOUS has 3 senses:

1. making claim to or creating an appearance of (often undeserved) importance or distinction

2. intended to attract notice and impress others

3. (of a display) tawdry or vulgar

  Familiarity information: PRETENTIOUS used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PRETENTIOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Making claim to or creating an appearance of (often undeserved) importance or distinction

Context example:

a pretentious scholarly edition

Similar:

arty (showily imitative of art or artists)

artsy-craftsy; arty-crafty (pretentiously artistic; cloyingly charming)

grandiloquent; overblown; pompous; pontifical; portentous (puffed up with vanity)

grandiose; hifalutin; highfalutin; highfaluting; hoity-toity; la-di-da (affectedly genteel)

high-flown; high-sounding; inflated (pretentious (especially with regard to language or ideals))

jumped-up ((British informal) upstart)

nouveau-riche; parvenu; parvenue; upstart (characteristic of someone who has risen economically or socially but lacks the social skills appropriate for this new position)

sententious (abounding in or given to pompous or aphoristic moralizing)

sesquipedalian (given to the overuse of long words)

Also:

tasteless (lacking aesthetic or social taste)

Antonym:

unpretentious (lacking pretension or affectation)

Derivation:

pretense (pretending with intention to deceive)

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

Sense 2

Meaning:

Intended to attract notice and impress others

Synonyms:

ostentatious; pretentious

Context example:

an ostentatious sable coat

Similar:

flaunty (inclined to flaunt)

flamboyant; showy; splashy (marked by ostentation but often tasteless)

Derivation:

pretentiousness (lack of elegance as a consequence of being pompous and puffed up with vanity)

Sense 3

Meaning:

(of a display) tawdry or vulgar

Synonyms:

ostentatious; pretentious

Similar:

tasteless (lacking aesthetic or social taste)

Derivation:

pretentiousness (lack of elegance as a consequence of being pompous and puffed up with vanity)

 Context examples 

Standing as it does near the corner of the street, it commands a view down Howe Street, with its more pretentious houses.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Back it came, with the editor's regrets, and Martin sent it to San Francisco again, this time to The Hornet, a pretentious monthly that had been fanned into a constellation of the first magnitude by the brilliant journalist who founded it.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)