4 uses
(click/touch triangles for details)
Definition
a false appearance or action to help one pretend
- She made a pretense of busying herself with unpacking.Chapter 4 (4% in)
- When she spied Mrs. McGanum or Mrs. Dyer ahead she crossed over with an elaborate pretense of looking at a billboard.Chapter 9 (7% in)
- The snow, stretching without break from streets to devouring prairie beyond, wiped out the town's pretense of being a shelter.Chapter 10 (27% in)
- She recalled tenderly the young awkwardness of Main Street and the makeshifts of the little brown cottages; she pitied their shabbiness and isolation; had compassion for their assertion of culture, even as expressed in Thanatopsis papers, for their pretense of greatness, even as trumpeted in "boosting."Chapter 38 (95% in)
There are no more uses of "pretense" in Main Street.
Typical Usage
(best examples)