pretension

pretension
    n 1: a false or unsupportable quality [syn: {pretension},
         {pretense}, {pretence}]
    2: the advancing of a claim; "his pretension to the crown"; "the
       town still puts forward pretensions as a famous resort"
    3: the quality of being pretentious (behaving or speaking in
       such a manner as to create a false appearance of great
       importance or worth) [syn: {pretentiousness}, {pretension},
       {largeness}] [ant: {unpretentiousness}]
    

Pretension \Pre*ten"sion\, n. [Cf. F. pr['e]tention. See
   {Pretend}, {Tension}.]
   1. The act of pretending, or laying claim; the act of
      asserting right or title.
      [1913 Webster]

            The arrogant pretensions of Glengarry contributed to
            protract the discussion.              --Macaulay.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. A claim made, whether true or false; a right alleged or
      assumed; a holding out the appearance of possessing a
      certain character; as, pretensions to scholarship.
      [1913 Webster]

            This was but an invention and pretension given out
            by the Spaniards.                     --Bacon.
      [1913 Webster]

            Men indulge those opinions and practices that favor
            their pretensions.                    --L'Estrange.
      [1913 Webster]
    

175 Moby Thesaurus words for "pretension":
      Barnumism, acting, affectation, affectedness, airs,
      airs and graces, alibi, ambitions, ambitiousness, apology,
      appearance, appurtenance, artificiality, aspiration,
      attitudinizing, authority, bedizenment, big talk, birthright,
      blind, bluff, bluffing, charade, cheating, claim, cloak, color,
      coloring, conjugal right, cover story, cover-up, deception,
      delusion, demand, device, disguise, dissemblance, dissembling,
      dissimulation, divine right, droit, due, excuse, facade, face,
      faculty, fakery, faking, false air, false front, false show,
      falsity, feigned belief, feigning, feint, flashiness, flatulence,
      flatulency, four-flushing, fraud, front, fulsomeness, garishness,
      gaudiness, gilt, gloss, grandiloquence, grandioseness, grandiosity,
      guise, handle, high-flown diction, humbug, humbuggery, hypocrisy,
      image, imposture, inalienable right, inflatedness, inflation,
      insincerity, interest, lame excuse, lexiphanicism, locus standi,
      loftiness, lofty affectations, luridness, magniloquence,
      make-believe, mannerism, mask, masquerade, mere rhetoric,
      mere show, meretriciousness, natural right, orotundity,
      ostensible motive, ostent, ostentation, ostentatious complexity,
      ostentatiousness, outward show, pageant, platitudinous ponderosity,
      playacting, polysyllabic profundity, pomposity, pompous prolixity,
      pompousness, pontification, poor excuse, pose, posing, posture,
      power, prerogative, prescription, presumptive right, pretending,
      pretense, pretensions, pretentiousness, pretext, proper claim,
      property right, prose run mad, protestation, prunes and prisms,
      public image, public motive, put-off, put-on, putting on airs,
      refuge, representation, rhetoric, rhetoricalness, right, screen,
      seeming, semblance, sensationalism, sententiousness, sham, show,
      showiness, simulacrum, simulation, smoke screen, speciousness,
      stalking-horse, stiltedness, stratagem, stylishness, subterfuge,
      swelling utterance, swollen phrase, swollenness, tall talk, title,
      tortuosity, tortuousness, trick, tumidity, tumidness, turgescence,
      turgidity, unnaturalness, varnish, veil, vested interest,
      vested right, window dressing