All 27 Uses
pretext
in
War and Peace
(Auto-generated)
- "Yes, but between ourselves," said the princess, "that is a pretext.†
Chpt 1
- Boris promised to fulfill her wish and was about to begin a conversation with her, when Anna Pavlovna called him away on the pretext that her aunt wished to hear him.†
Chpt 5 *
- "How I should have loved him!" said Natasha, immediately guessing his thought; "but I know you wish to avoid any pretext for finding fault with us."†
Chpt 6
- To his former pretexts for irony a fresh one was now added—allusions to stepmothers and amiabilities to Mademoiselle Bourienne.†
Chpt 6
- They looked at one another (now that the hunt was over and they were in the house, Nicholas no longer considered it necessary to show his manly superiority over his sister), Natasha gave him a wink, and neither refrained long from bursting into a peal of ringing laughter even before they had a pretext ready to account for it.†
Chpt 7
- The reasons on which the Duc de Bassano based his refusal to deliver them to him would never have led me to suppose that that could serve as a pretext for aggression.†
Chpt 9
- He thought that if he challenged him without some fresh cause it might compromise the young Countess Rostova and so he wanted to meet Kuragin personally in order to find a fresh pretext for a duel.†
Chpt 9
- That arousing of the people by their sovereign and his call to them to defend their country—the very incitement which was the chief cause of Russia's triumph in so far as it was produced by the Tsar's personal presence in Moscow—was suggested to the Emperor, and accepted by him, as a pretext for quitting the army.†
Chpt 9
- Seeing his gloomy face as he frowned at his wife, the officers grew still merrier, and some of them could not refrain from laughter, for which they hurriedly sought plausible pretexts.†
Chpt 9
- Shinshin, with a sarcastic smile on his lips, was evidently preparing to make fun of anything that gave him the opportunity: Sonya's reading, any remark of the count's, or even the manifesto itself should no better pretext present itself.†
Chpt 9
- At last the Emperor left the army, and as the most convenient and indeed the only pretext for his departure it was decided that it was necessary for him to inspire the people in the capitals and arouse the nation in general to a patriotic war.†
Chpt 10
- Lubomirski, Bronnitski, Wlocki, and the others of that group stirred up so much trouble that Barclay, under pretext of sending papers to the Emperor, dispatched these Polish adjutants general to Petersburg and plunged into an open struggle with Bennigsen and the Tsarevich.†
Chpt 10
- If Bennigsen insisted on the position being defended and others still discussed it, the question was no longer important in itself but only as a pretext for disputes and intrigue.†
Chpt 11
- They were all waiting for Bennigsen, who on the pretext of inspecting the position was finishing his savory dinner.†
Chpt 11
- With regard to administrative matters, the establishment of a municipality did not stop the robberies and was only of use to certain people who formed part of that municipality and under pretext of preserving order looted Moscow or saved their own property from being looted.†
Chpt 13
- The day after the council at Malo-Yaroslavets Napoleon rode out early in the morning amid the lines of his army with his suite of marshals and an escort, on the pretext of inspecting the army and the scene of the previous and of the impending battle.†
Chpt 13
- Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself up as a prisoner to escape from all this horror and misery; but on the one hand the force of this common attraction to Smolensk, their goal, drew each of them in the same direction; on the other hand an army corps could not surrender to a company, and though the French availed themselves of every convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to surrender on the slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not always occur.†
Chpt 13
- Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself up as a prisoner to escape from all this horror and misery; but on the one hand the force of this common attraction to Smolensk, their goal, drew each of them in the same direction; on the other hand an army corps could not surrender to a company, and though the French availed themselves of every convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to surrender on the slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not always occur.†
Chpt 13
- What for people in their full vigor is an aim was for her evidently merely a pretext.†
Chpt 15
- Thus in the morning—especially if she had eaten anything rich the day before—she felt a need of being angry and would choose as the handiest pretext Belova's deafness.†
Chpt 15
- Another pretext would be her snuff, which would seem too dry or too damp or not rubbed fine enough.†
Chpt 15
- Just as she needed to work off her spleen so she had sometimes to exercise her still-existing faculty of thinking—and the pretext for that was a game of patience.†
Chpt 15
- When she needed to cry, the deceased count would be the pretext.†
Chpt 15
- When she wanted to be agitated, Nicholas and his health would be the pretext, and when she felt a need to speak spitefully, the pretext would be Countess Mary.†
Chpt 15
- When she wanted to be agitated, Nicholas and his health would be the pretext, and when she felt a need to speak spitefully, the pretext would be Countess Mary.†
Chpt 15
- When her vocal organs needed exercise, which was usually toward seven o'clock when she had had an after-dinner rest in a darkened room, the pretext would be the retelling of the same stories over and over again to the same audience.†
Chpt 15
- "What is that, mon cher ami?" asked the countess, who had finished her tea and evidently needed a pretext for being angry after her meal.†
Chpt 15
Definitions:
-
(1)
(pretext) a false reason presented to hide the real reason for doing something
- (2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)