6 uses
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Definition
a false appearance or action to help one pretend
- Julie made a pretence to feel for the key.Chapters 29-30 (64% in)
- Under pretence of being fatigued, Dantes asked to take the helm; the steersman, glad to be relieved, looked at the captain, and the latter by a sign indicated that he might abandon it to his new comrade.Chapters 22-23 (52% in)
- You know that my means are limited, and that I am what would be designated a man of moderate pretensions.Chapters 57-58 (50% in)
- "I would ask for six months' in advance, under pretence of being able to purchase a farm, then with my six months I would decamp."Chapters 81-82 (28% in)
- Consequently, the procureur is very active in the affair, and the prefect of police very much interested; and, thanks to that interest, for which I am very grateful, they send me all the robbers of Paris and the neighborhood, under pretence of their being Caderousse's murderers, so that in three months, if this continues, every robber and assassin in France will have the plan of my house at his fingers' end.Chapters 85-86 (10% in)
- Before daybreak he would awake, leave the inn after rigorously paying his bill, and reaching the forest, he would, under pretence of making studies in painting, test the hospitality of some peasants, procure himself the dress of a woodcutter and a hatchet, casting off the lion's skin to assume that of the woodman; then, with his hands covered with dirt, his hair darkened by means of a leaden comb, his complexion embrowned with a preparation for which one of his old comrades had given...Chapters 97-98 (60% in)
There are no more uses of "pretense" in The Count of Monte Cristo.
Typical Usage
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