6 uses
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Definition
a false reason presented to hide the real reason for doing something
- At all events you WILL come back: you will not be induced under any pretext to take up a permanent residence with her?Chapter 21 (19% in)
- Adele was not easy to teach that day; she could not apply: she kept running to the door and looking over the banisters to see if she could get a glimpse of Mr. Rochester; then she coined pretexts to go downstairs, in order, as I shrewdly suspected, to visit the library, where I knew she was not wanted; then, when I got a little angry, and made her sit still, she continued to talk incessantly of her "ami, Monsieur Edouard Fairfax DE Rochester," as she dubbed him (I had not before heard...Chapter 13 (5% in)
- You will not speak to him on any pretext — and — Richard, it will be at the peril of your life if you speak to her: open your lips — agitate yourself— —and I'll not answer for the consequences."Chapter 20 (27% in)
- It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment.Chapter 23 (22% in)
- I felt the truth of these words; and I drew from them the certain inference, that if I were so far to forget myself and all the teaching that had ever been instilled into me, as — under any pretext — with any justification — through any temptation — to become the successor of these poor girls, he would one day regard me with the same feeling which now in his mind desecrated their memory.Chapter 27 (60% in)
- I passed up the street, looking as I went at all the houses to the right hand and to the left; but I could discover no pretext, nor see an inducement to enter any.Chapter 28 (29% in)
There are no more uses of "pretext" in Jane Eyre.
Typical Usage
(best examples)