All 11 Uses
pretense
in
Arrowsmith
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- On pretense of helping her set the tables, he had a moment with her, and whimpered, "Lord, you're so lovely!†
Chpt 5pretense = a false appearance or action to help one pretend
- He felt guilty for his scoffing; he suddenly saw the pathos in her pretense that this stretch of tar-paper and slatted walks was a blazing garden.†
Chpt 5
- In his tangled mood he catalogued Madeline's pretenses, her nagging, her selfishness, her fundamental ignorance.†
Chpt 6pretenses = appearances or actions to help one pretend
- He saw that it was she, with her pretenses, who was the child, and the detached and fearless Leora who was mature, mistress of a real world.†
Chpt 6
- Then, it appeared, she had secretly sent for a shorthand book and, on pretense of helping Bert, she was using the typewriter in the bank, hoping that by next autumn she could join Martin and earn her own living as a stenographer.†
Chpt 10pretense = a false appearance or action to help one pretend
- When their skiis were entangled, they rolled into a drift, and as she clung to him, unafraid and unembarrassed, it seemed to him that in the roughness of tweeds she was but the softer and more wonderful—eyes fearless, cheeks brilliant as she brushed the coating of wet snow from them, flying legs of a slim boy, shoulders adorable in their pretense of sturdy boyishness— But "I'm a sentimental fool!†
Chpt 20
- He had stopped his pretense of working; he was standing before her, arms akimbo, dark eyes demanding.
Chpt 21 *
- But when the anti-vivisection lady wound up, "And as for your pretensions to know anything about science, you're no scientist at all!" then with a shriek the anti-nicotine lady leaped from her platform, dug her fingers into the anti-vivisection lady's hair, and observed with distinctness, "I'll show you whether I know anything about science!"†
Chpt 23pretensions = appearances or actions to help one pretend
- Martin had never been roused by politics, but he was stirred now by Pickerbaugh's twitchy pretense of indifference, by the telephoned report from the newspaper office, "Here's Willow Grove township—Pickerbaugh leading, two to one!" by the crowds which went past the house howling, "Pickerbaugh, Pickerbaugh, Pickerbaugh!"†
Chpt 23pretense = a false appearance or action to help one pretend
- God give me a quiet and relentless anger against all pretense and all pretentious work and all work left slack and unfinished.†
Chpt 26
- With this and the other complications, viewing his hot work in St. Hubert as coldly as though it were the pretense of a man whom he had never seen, Martin decided that he had no adequate proof, and strode in to see the Director.†
Chpt 36
Definitions:
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(1)
(pretense) a false appearance or action to help one pretendThis is sometimes seen in the expression "false pretense" or "false pretenses" which is just emphasizing that behavior or actions do not reflect the true situation.
- (2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)