Sample Sentences for
pretentious
(editor-reviewed)

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    'Juvenile hyperspace' would just refer to the behavior of juvenile dinosaurs—if you wanted to be as pretentious as possible.  (source)
    pretentious = trying to appear impressive
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    Luz accuses Ivanito of repeating their mother's pretentious phrases, of saying things like "The moon glares with a vivid indifference."  (source)
    pretentious = attempting to act more impressive than is deserved
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    It held even though the more prosperous preachers started to tack the pretentious title of "Doctor" in front of their name and started to spend more time at seminars than visiting the sick.  (source)
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    My formal Spanish must have sounded as pretentious to the ears of the paisano as "Whither goeth my sire?"  (source)
    pretentious = showy (trying to appear impressive)
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    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.†  (source)
    standard suffix: The suffix "-sion", converts a verb into a noun that denotes the action or result of the verb. Typically, there is a slight change in the ending of the root verb, as in admission from admit, discussion from discuss, and invasion from invade.
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    He was honest, and unpretentious.†  (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unpretentious means not and reverses the meaning of pretentious. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
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    ...From the beginning he had been the one marked—by brute situation as much as by any gift of his—to understand them all; and finally—he could say it now without pretentiousness and without a self-deprecatory curl of the lip, for he knew at last, knew he had never hated any of them, the hatred was mere self-defense, the howling of a child not yet ready to put on his destiny like an old wool coat—finally, he knew, he was the one who'd been marked.†  (source)
    standard suffix: The suffix "-ness" converts an adjective to a noun that means the quality of. This is the same pattern you see in words like darkness, kindness, and coolness.
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    She knew what it was all meant to represent, but it was so pretentiously false and unnatural that she first felt ashamed for the actors and then amused at them.†  (source)
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    She liked to watch him eat because he did it so deeply, handling and savoring things, handling utensils, chewing food thoroughly, the way he paused unpretentiously with the wineglass an inch from his lips, waiting, savoring, a sense of earth and our connection to it, that was Albert over a dish of inky squid—earth and sea and the way he looked at food in the plate, breathing it all in before he even touched a fork.†  (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unpretentiously means not and reverses the meaning of pretentiously. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
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    Suddenly Ma appears, gliding into the room with an uncanny mix of star power and unpretentiousness.†  (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unpretentiousness means not and reverses the meaning of pretentiousness. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
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    I'm pretentious.  (source)
    pretentious = trying to appear more impressive than is deserved
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    I have seen in his face a far different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it — to answer what he asked without pretension, to address him when needful without grimace — and it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and warmed one like a fostering sunbeam.†  (source)
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    He was in his early forties, slender, wore glasses and had the bearing of unpretentious authority about him.†  (source)
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