Both Uses of
pretentious
in
Atlas Shrugged
- It was an unpretentious company with an unblemished reputation, the kind of business concern that seldom grows large, but never fails.†
Chpt 1.7 *
- He saw them as they had been at their first meeting: he, the man of violent energy and passionate ambition, the man of achievement, lighted by the flame of his success and flung into the midst of those pretentious ashes who called themselves an intellectual elite, the burned out remnants of undigested culture, feeding on the afterglow of the minds of others, offering their denial of the mind as their only claim to distinction, and a craving to control the world as their only lust-she,…†
Chpt 3.6
Definition:
-
(pretentious) acting more impressive than is deserved