How To Use Pretence In A Sentence
-
But, just in case you get the idea that all was pretence and subterfuge, I feel I should let you know just how the mother of a friend of mine described the communist years.
-
He had circled around to come to the village by the south, on the pretence of making it appear that he was headed for Kaye.
-
The novel is also natural in the sense of man's everyday life, done without pretence and pose.
-
He didn't like the food, but he made a pretence of eating some of it as he was a guest.
-
The following list makes no pretence to completeness; ‘martext’, ‘carrytale’, ‘pleaseman’,
English Past and Present
-
Miss Margland, who, sideling towards the window, on pretence of examining a print, had heard and seen all that had passed, was almost overpowered with rage, by the conviction she received that her apprehensions were not groundless.
Camilla
-
The democratic pretences of the opposition have always been threadbare.
-
On pretence of enjoying a free air, he mounted the box, and employed his elocution and generosity with such success, that the driver undertook to disable the diligence from proceeding beyond the town of Alost for that day; and, in consequence of his promise, gently overturned it when they were but a mile short of that baiting-place.
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle
-
These people are all engaged in a game of pretence.
-
Constantinople, where I lived gaily, and spent my money; but I found that to mix in the world, it is necessary not only to have an attaghan, but also to have the courage to use it; and in several broils which took place, from my too frequent use of the water of the Giaour, I invariably proved that, although my voice was that of a lion, my heart was but as water, and the finger of contempt was but too often pointed at the beard of pretence.
The Pacha of Many Tales
-
He tried to get close to her under the pretence of examining the pictures on the wall.
-
He was hanged without even the pretence of a proper trial.
-
You came here under false pretences, though I admit there were mitigating circumstances.
A SONG AT TWILIGHT
-
* Thus, in "The state was made, under the pretence of serving it, in reality the prize of their contention to each of these opposite parties," it is unpleasantly doubtful whether the writer means (1) _state_ or (2) _parties_ to be emphatic.
How to Write Clearly Rules and Exercises on English Composition
-
He made no pretence of great musical knowledge.
-
His appeal to blasphemy is played in such a way that it seems a disingenuous pretence.
-
That way he could abandon any pretence of loyalty to the book and invent all the Game of Thrones characters he wanted.
Times, Sunday Times
-
It means that we let go of posturing and pretence and live simply as we are, in truth, at ease with ourselves and with others, not having to worry about who's up or who's down, who's in or who's out.
-
I'm looking to be entertained: boredom, tedium is the worst literary or filmic sin, and cannot be excused by a pretence to some spurious intellectual superiority.
-
Describing the film as a reflection of life in present India, the film-maker points out that the roles the characters play within the film become their masks and pretence to higher moral ground.
-
Sesostris, or Pharaoh Ramses II, whose mummy was unswathed in 1886 by Maspero of the Bulak Museum, and recognised as that of the greatest king of Egypt, whose grandson, Ramses III, was the last king of an ancient kingdom. when not a mere pretence, degenerated but too often into Black Magic.
-
However, in those circumstances, the whole scheme would be a sham and a pretence.
-
As an auxiliary to the bilging by boring, the masts are often cut away under the pretence of making her "lie easy," or to prevent "thumping."
-
Furthermore, this High King who has forced Tarn into vassalage reigns under false pretences.
IRONCROWN MOON: PART TWO OF THE BOREAL MOON TALE
-
WORDS ACCENTED ON THE LAST SYLLABLE: address _address'_ adept _adept'_ adult _adult'_ ally _ally'_ commandant _commandänt '(ä as in arm) _ contour _contour'_ dessert _dessert'_ dilate _dilate'_ excise _eksiz'_ finance _finance'_ grimace _grimace'_ importune _importune'_ occult _occult'_ pretence _pretence'_ research _research'_ robust _robust'_ romance _romance'_ tirade _tirade'_
Practical Grammar and Composition
-
WORDS ACCENTED ON THE LAST SYLLABLE: address _address'_ adept _adept'_ adult _adult'_ ally _ally'_ commandant _commandänt '(ä as in arm) _ contour _contour'_ dessert _dessert'_ dilate _dilate'_ excise _eksiz'_ finance _finance'_ grimace _grimace'_ importune _importune'_ occult _occult'_ pretence _pretence'_ research _research'_ robust _robust'_ romance _romance'_ tirade _tirade'_
Practical Grammar and Composition
-
It is impossible to say what quantity of gold the Kunsi may get; but their pretence that they _get none_ must be false, when every common Malay obtains from half to one bunkal per month.
The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido For the Suppression of Piracy
-
And I thinke verilie, that in one region of all the worlde againe, are not halfe so many straungers as in Italie; specially of gentilmen, whose resorte thither is principallie under pretence of studie ... all kyndes of vertue maie there be learned: and therfore are those places accordyngly furnisshed: not of suche students alone, as moste commonly are brought up in our universitees (meane mens children set to schole in hope to live upon hyred learnyng) but for the more parte of noble mens sonnes, and of the best gentilmen: that studie more for knowledge and pleasure than for curiositee or luker: ...
English Travellers of the Renaissance
-
By the end of the evening she had abandoned all pretence of being interested.
-
Fights were sometimes orchestrated under false pretences, so that inmates could swipe and pilfer a target person's store items.
-
WORDS ACCENTED ON THE LAST SYLLABLE: address _address'_ adept _adept'_ adult _adult'_ ally _ally'_ commandant _commandänt '(ä as in arm) _ contour _contour'_ dessert _dessert'_ dilate _dilate'_ excise _eksiz'_ finance _finance'_ grimace _grimace'_ importune _importune'_ occult _occult'_ pretence _pretence'_ research _research'_ robust _robust'_ romance _romance'_ tirade _tirade'_
Practical Grammar and Composition
-
We meet everywhere so much kindness now, that we can make no pretence to confessorship. '
Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2
-
We should give up the pretence, take holidays for their own sake, and restore some dignity to the nominal purpose of existing national holidays.
Times, Sunday Times
-
These people are all engaged in a game of pretence.
-
It's given up the pretence of being from anyone's kitchen.
Times, Sunday Times
-
The absurd pretence of the supermom role was taking its toll.
Times, Sunday Times
-
The pretence of seamlessness is unseemly.
Times, Sunday Times
-
Some of its leading figures no longer maintain the pretence that outright victory is possible.
Times, Sunday Times
-
Like his predecessor, he maintains a pretence that the judiciary is independent of the Kremlin.
Times, Sunday Times
-
If you want a pretence to whip a dog, say that he ate the frying-pam.
-
He ripped away the mask of pretence which covered their activities.
-
Cheney and his pack of merry men spent 8 years destroying the economy, invading other countries under false pretences and just plain screwing up.
Cheney named Conservative of the Year
-
The investigators' methods included obtaining phone records using false pretences, a process known as pretexting.
Times, Sunday Times
-
He demonstrated to her, -- that the disobligation to her Parents would be greater by going to a Monastery, since it was only to avoid a choice which they had made for her, and which she could not have so just a pretence to do till she had made one for her self.
Incognita; or, Love and Duty Reconcil'd
-
Roman satin" and what is called "_satin de luxe_" (perhaps because it is not so luxurious as it pretends to be) are effective ground-stuffs easy to work upon; but there is an odour of pretence about satin-faced cotton.
Art in Needlework A Book about Embroidery
-
Wad ye daur to sweir afore a leddy," she exclaimed, shaking her uplifted hands in pretence of ghasted astonishment.
The Marquis of Lossie
-
Philip the Bold, by having an inescutcheon of pretence on the centre of the arms of Margaret de Maele, first assumed by his father, John the
Illuminated Manuscripts
-
Note, the sincere and serious beggars at Christ's door commonly meet with the worst rebukes from those that follow him but in pretence and hypocrisy.
Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume V (Matthew to John)
-
I am in my contrivances and pretences to blind my gaoleress, and to take off the jealousy of her principals on my going down so often into the garden and poultry-yard.
Clarissa Harlowe
-
She made absolutely no pretence of being interested.
-
There was no pretence there, no act, and there was something about her that felt like a real breath of fresh air.
-
WORDS ACCENTED ON THE LAST SYLLABLE: address _address'_ adept _adept'_ adult _adult'_ ally _ally'_ commandant _commandänt '(ä as in arm) _ contour _contour'_ dessert _dessert'_ dilate _dilate'_ excise _eksiz'_ finance _finance'_ grimace _grimace'_ importune _importune'_ occult _occult'_ pretence _pretence'_ research _research'_ robust _robust'_ romance _romance'_ tirade _tirade'_
Practical Grammar and Composition
-
WORDS ACCENTED ON THE LAST SYLLABLE: address _address'_ adept _adept'_ adult _adult'_ ally _ally'_ commandant _commandänt '(ä as in arm) _ contour _contour'_ dessert _dessert'_ dilate _dilate'_ excise _eksiz'_ finance _finance'_ grimace _grimace'_ importune _importune'_ occult _occult'_ pretence _pretence'_ research _research'_ robust _robust'_ romance _romance'_ tirade _tirade'_
Practical Grammar and Composition
-
It is wrong to ensure the lawsuit false pretence as the swindle crime, though it has some characters of swindle crime.
-
The pretence that they are working to unite the party will have gone.
Times, Sunday Times
-
And how would the time spent by the presenters of ‘happenings’ and other such phony pretences of art be measured?
-
Altman strips away the pretence and mythology to expose the film industry as a business like any other.
-
Altman strips away the pretence and mythology to expose the film industry as a business like any other.
-
As for all other pretences, they are nothing but death and damnation dressed up in fair words and false shews; nothing but gins, and snares, and trapans for souls, contrived by the devil, and managed by such as the devil sets on work.
Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions. Vol. II.
-
Suppose I am trying to predict a decision you are about to make, and I am using pretence-based simulation.
-
Finding the enclosures is made more difficult by the sixty odd additions made since the opening, none of which makes any pretence to architectural merit.
-
Only, he had one singular advantage for the promotion of his pretence and desire; for whereas this whole contignation of churches into all these storeys, in the top whereof he emerged and lifted up himself, was nothing but an accommodation of the church and its affairs unto the government of the Roman empire, or the setting up of an ecclesiastical image and representation of its secular power and rule, the centring therein of all subordinate powers and orders in one monarch inclined the minds of men to comply with his design as very reasonable.
A Discourse concerning Evangelical Love, Church Peace, and Unity
-
I make no pretence to being an expert on the subject.
-
Hunger has driven him to abandon all social pretence and he describes his own animal behaviour.
-
Item, in another he had a little leather bottle full of old oil, wherewith, when he saw any man or woman in a rich new handsome suit, he would grease, smutch, and spoil all the best parts of it under colour and pretence of touching them, saying, This is good cloth; this is good satin; good taffeties!
Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel
-
a shield of arms, within an orb ar.sa. a spread eagle of the first bearing an escutcheon of pretence ar. a lion ppr. in chief in base a chev.gu. charged with three escallop shells of the first, impaling a saltire sa. between four crosses fitche of the same.
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 14, No. 394, October 17, 1829
-
What it was, instead, was a farrago of paranoia and pretence, hysteria and lies.
-
Good music, friendly staff, and a belting atmosphere, nice clientele, lots of class without too much pretence and one of the better bars in Manchester.
-
My answer the other day had not been entirely honest, for it was no use maintaining the pretence that my coming departure was a matter of chance.
THE LAST OF THE GENTLEMEN ADVENTURERS: Coming of Age in the Arctic
-
They are ill served by the pretence of simplicity, or the fatuous notion that the relationship is one big, rolling quid pro quo.
Times, Sunday Times
-
This Labour stalwart is the Luftfur Rahman who was a selectorial candidate for the PPC-ship at Bethnal Green and Bow, and not the one who is Leader of the Labour Group at Tower Hamlets, or the one who recently completed the clear out of Longsight, Manchester by ousting the false pretences Lib Dem gate maker Liaqat Ali.
Trial by Jeory: Getting All Anal Over CV Massage
-
WORDS ACCENTED ON THE LAST SYLLABLE: address _address'_ adept _adept'_ adult _adult'_ ally _ally'_ commandant _commandänt '(ä as in arm) _ contour _contour'_ dessert _dessert'_ dilate _dilate'_ excise _eksiz'_ finance _finance'_ grimace _grimace'_ importune _importune'_ occult _occult'_ pretence _pretence'_ research _research'_ robust _robust'_ romance _romance'_ tirade _tirade'_
Practical Grammar and Composition
-
They are ill served by the pretence of simplicity, or the fatuous notion that the relationship is one big, rolling quid pro quo.
Times, Sunday Times
-
Intimating, that doubtless that was the occasion of all this confusion, and disorder of mind, and of his shiness of the Divine pretence,
An Essay on the Mosaic Account of the Creation and Fall of Man.
-
Hunger has driven him to abandon all social pretence and he describes his own animal behaviour.
-
Old Keltie, the landlord, who had bestowed his name on a bridge in the neighbourhood of his quondam dwelling, received the carrier with his usual festive cordiality, and adjourned with him into the house, under pretence of important business, which, I believe, consisted in their emptying together a mutchkin stoup of usquebaugh.
The Abbot
-
The western is about the pretence of being a man.
Times, Sunday Times
-
But, by asserting the Scripture to be the canon of oar faith, I have unavoidably created to myself two sorts of enemies: the Papists indeed, more directly, because they have kept the Scriptures from us what they could; and have reserved to themselves a right of interpreting what they have delivered under the pretence of infallibility: and the Fanatics more collaterally, because they have assumed what amounts to an infallibility, in the private spirit; and have detorted those texts of
The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Volume 1 With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes
-
There were medley-pictures contrived of photographs cut out and grouped together in novel and unexpected relations; and there were set about divers patterns and pretences in keramics, as the decoration of earthen pots and jars was called.
The Coast of Bohemia
-
He made no pretence of thinking the principle of divorce _a vinculo_ anything but an immense evil, but he still held himself free, if that view were repudiated, to consider the legislative question of dissolubility and its conditions.
The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) 1809-1859
-
An unashamed populist who made no pretence to intellectual qualities, he endeared himself to many with his robust Northern sense of humour and straightforward manner.
Times, Sunday Times
-
Finding the enclosures is made more difficult by the sixty odd additions made since the opening, none of which makes any pretence to architectural merit.
-
He was deported for entering the country under false pretences.
-
At the same time, she would inscribe a self that is so multiple and mutable as to subvert, by its very nature, any pretence to stability - much less the transcendence of a single identity.
-
I was operating under the illusion that only I knew how vile this curry was and continued the pretence by enthusiastically wolfing it down.
-
Our women it seems have left their homes on some pretence of Bacchic worship, and are now gadding about on the wooded mountain slopes, dancing in honour of this upstart god, Dionysus
-
Pretence of any kind was as the red rag; "bleat" was the unpardonable sin; the man who was "human" was the man to be praised.
Nights Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties
-
Precisely how these marriages are distinct from hiring a sex worker, I am unclear – but the distinction at least keeps up the pretence that the new sexual culture doesn't violate religious order.
-
This they have done without any pretence of ignorance of the objects of oppression for which this prince has thought fit to become their renter; for he has again and again told them that it is for the sole purpose of exercising authority he holds the jaghire lands; and he affirms (and I believe with truth) that he pays more for that territory than the revenues yield.
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 02 (of 12)
-
The man promises to tell his son of her visit and, keeping up the pretence, goes to a masked ball under the guise of his ‘son’.
-
It is implied, however, that this is never more than a pretence, a cover, behind which he conceals his unavowed determination to remain at a stage from which he could, if he chose, release himself.
-
He had circled around to come to the village by the south, on the pretence of making it appear that he was headed for Kaye.
-
Critics could barely keep to the constitutional pretence that the monarch was above political error.
-
I have already referred to him as being almost the only "highflyer" in the prison, as being the man who once obtained 150_l. _ from a gentleman in Devonshire under false pretences.
Six Years in the Prisons of England
-
I'm speaking to this wicked child, who has obtained our love and sympathy and attention on false pretences, for which she ought to be put in prison -- yes, in _prison_, for such a heartless trick on relatives who can ill afford to be so cruelly disappointed! '
The Talking Horse And Other Tales
-
WORDS ACCENTED ON THE LAST SYLLABLE: address _address'_ adept _adept'_ adult _adult'_ ally _ally'_ commandant _commandänt '(ä as in arm) _ contour _contour'_ dessert _dessert'_ dilate _dilate'_ excise _eksiz'_ finance _finance'_ grimace _grimace'_ importune _importune'_ occult _occult'_ pretence _pretence'_ research _research'_ robust _robust'_ romance _romance'_ tirade _tirade'_
Practical Grammar and Composition
-
So my book choices don't reflect a pretence to intellectualism - quite the reverse.
-
Later, when the usefulness of pretence had passed, people would be allowed to wave their children off, although it is doubtful whether this rendered the moment any less painful.
-
It's also incredibly insensitive that he offers you unsolicited counselling - he should have the grace to maintain the pretence of secrecy.
Times, Sunday Times
-
The tunes make no pretence at being high art; this is meat and potatoes, served with a hot sauce.
Times, Sunday Times
-
I tried to maintain a pretence after my release and acted as though I were fine.
Times, Sunday Times
-
Under the pretence of lighting a candle, she evades him and disappears.
-
It was all an elaborate pretence.
-
The theory made the greatest pretence of having a scientific foundation.
-
It makes no pretence about what it does.
Times, Sunday Times
-
If you want a pretence to whip a dog, say that he ate the frying-pam.
-
Feigned necessities, imaginary necessities, are the greatest cozenage which man can put upon the providence of God, and make pretences to break known rules by.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847
-
It was said; and we retired under the pretence of seeking repose, each fancying that the other was deceived: but when at morning's dawn I descended to the carriage which was to convey me away, they were all there — my father again to bless me, Clerval to press my hand once more, my
Chapter 3
-
They wanted an end to secrecy and the covering up of blunders, there was to be no dissimulation in producing policies, no more pretence that all was well when it clearly was not.
-
The charges put to the accused yesterday include the falsification of accounts, acquiring money under false pretences and failing to keep records.
-
He eschews technical jargon and any pretence of omniscience, providing instead an intimate, heartfelt account of his experiences.
-
In July, 1968, he appeared in court for bigamy, larceny and false pretences, with 116 offences considered, and was sentenced to two years jail, suspended for three years.
-
At least in recent years the Federal Government has abandoned the pretence of supporting the UN target while making no genuine attempt to achieve it.
-
In such cases the girl “should bring him to her house under the pretence of seeing the fights of quails, cocks and rams, of hearing the maina (a kind of starling) talk .... she should also amuse him for a long time by telling him such stories and doing such things as he may take most delight in.”
The Life of Sir Richard Burton
-
Dance scenes that fly from even the pretence of naturalism to attain an oneiric expressionism…
-
It has been clearly laid down by the ruling of the Lord Chief Justice and others that the law of this country does not recognize supernatural powers of any sort whatever, and that a pretence of such powers where payment is involved constitutes a crime in itself.
The Land of Mist
-
Many gave up any pretence at collegiality and fought single-mindedly for their own vision of defence.
Times, Sunday Times
-
Theres a bad kind, where the pretence is instead of the real thing, as when a man pretends hes going to help you instead of really helping you.
As I Please
-
But I'm abandoning the pretence.
Times, Sunday Times
-
Clerks were continually chided for carrying themselves with a pretence of gentility in their dress, but clerks had little choice in the matter.
-
And so begins a deadly war of social one-upmanship, with both maintaining the pretence that no such war is actually taking place.
Times, Sunday Times
-
We did not need any persuading to give up the pretence of sleep at the earliest possible moment.
THE LAST OF THE GENTLEMEN ADVENTURERS: Coming of Age in the Arctic
-
In effect the Bank was conducting the rescue by itself, with the clearers being used only so that there could be a pretence to the public that normal credit lines were being extended to those being rescued.
-
He detects a rise in self delusion, a diminution of individual identity and a selling-out of the soul, and reveals a hardening distaste for falsehood and pretence in his darkly-amusing morality play.
-
I'm looking to be entertained: boredom, tedium is the worst literary or filmic sin, and cannot be excused by a pretence to some spurious intellectual superiority.
-
Accordingly, the Pithamarda should bring the man to her house, under the pretence of seeing the fights of quails, cocks, and rams, of hearing the maina (a kind of starling) talk, or of seeing some other spectacle, or the practice of some art; or he may take the woman to the abode of the man.
The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, Introduction and Concluding Remarks
-
Any pretence that England were unfortunate victims of circumstance in New Zealand has been blown out of the water and replaced by a litany of examples of avarice and muddle-headed thinking.
Damning reports expose something rotten at heart of England rugby | Robert Kitson
-
Rome -- the 'colluvies gentium' -- the sink of the nations, with its conceit, its pomposity, its beggary, its profligacy, its superstition, its pretence of preserving the Roman law and rights, while practically it cared for no law nor right at all.
Roman and the Teuton
-
However, in those circumstances, the whole scheme would be a sham and a pretence.
-
WORDS ACCENTED ON THE LAST SYLLABLE: address _address'_ adept _adept'_ adult _adult'_ ally _ally'_ commandant _commandänt '(ä as in arm) _ contour _contour'_ dessert _dessert'_ dilate _dilate'_ excise _eksiz'_ finance _finance'_ grimace _grimace'_ importune _importune'_ occult _occult'_ pretence _pretence'_ research _research'_ robust _robust'_ romance _romance'_ tirade _tirade'_
Practical Grammar and Composition
-
Address; for if I had told my Father or Mother, I shou'd but have embarrass'd them in a difficult Business, for it ill befitted them to profer their Daughter in Marriage, and disagreeable, to leave me to struggle with my own Passion, and his Pretences, without taking any
The Amours of Bosvil and Galesia
-
Barry's body slumps, as if tired of the pretence of being strong and unemotional.
-
He didn't like the food, but he made a pretence of eating some of it as he was a guest.
-
Another, a "parcel of fellows armed with cutlasses like a pressgang," appeared at Dublin in 1743, where they boldly entered public-houses on pretence of looking for sailors, and there extorted money and drink.
The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore
-
In the morning sow thy seed upon the objects of charity that offer themselves early, and in the evening do not withhold thy hand, under pretence that thou art weary; as thou hast opportunity, be doing good, some way or other, all the day long, as the husbandman follows his seedness from morning till night.
Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume III (Job to Song of Solomon)
-
She covered her retreat nobly, made a curtsey to the priests, genuflected calmly, laid down the aspergill, and, under pretence of having been sent for something which these careless priests had forgotten, retired with honors; and then I suppose had a good long cry.
My New Curate
-
The nuances, exaggerations and pretences of conversation can be taken literally.
-
Thus he dismissed as insubstantial any pretence to an absolute form of knowledge, which seeks to soar above the resistant medium of experience.
-
Even more germanely, in his essays, he condemns the appropriation of Native stories by nonAboriginal writers as well as the latter's pretence of going Native.
-
No man of any literary name condescended even to the pretence of religion; but in England, infidelity was a stigma; when it began to take a public form, it was only in the vilest quarter; and when it assailed religion, it was instantly put down at once by the pen, by the law, and by the more decisive tribunal of national opinion.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847
-
The thought is wiredrawn to inanity, but the words make it perfectly clear that the poet was the only one of the lady's lovers -- to the definite exclusion of all others -- whose name justified the quibbling pretence of identity with the 'will' which controls her being.
A Life of William Shakespeare with portraits and facsimiles
-
If you want a pretence to whip a dog, say that he ate the frying-pam.
-
The pretence is to negotiate; the purpose is to separate.
The Value of Canada, the Risks it Faces
-
WORDS ACCENTED ON THE LAST SYLLABLE: address _address'_ adept _adept'_ adult _adult'_ ally _ally'_ commandant _commandänt '(ä as in arm) _ contour _contour'_ dessert _dessert'_ dilate _dilate'_ excise _eksiz'_ finance _finance'_ grimace _grimace'_ importune _importune'_ occult _occult'_ pretence _pretence'_ research _research'_ robust _robust'_ romance _romance'_ tirade _tirade'_
Practical Grammar and Composition
-
She was unable to keep up the pretence that she loved him.
-
The novel makes no pretence of providing unambiguous answers, but takes us on a beguiling, questing journey.
Times, Sunday Times
-
I admire the brawny bravado of the pretence, but I'm not convinced.
-
Anyone suffering guilt for the rebellion against all social niceties would have kept up the pretence that she didn't want any water, at least until I had left the building.
-
With regard to these wretched, horrible, bloody lumps of caramel gunge, he had constructed a whole covert, hidden, humiliating world of pretence and lies, sneaking around pharmacies and stores to find his fix, inventing a serious disease for himself to cover an addiction as compelling and overpowering as if it had been heroin that enslaved him.
Portobello
-
In such cases the girl "should bring him to her house under the pretence of seeing the fights of quails, cocks and rams, of hearing the maina (a kind of starling) talk .... she should also amuse him for a long time by telling him such stories and doing such things as he may take most delight in.
The Life of Sir Richard Burton
-
Describing the film as a reflection of life in present India, the film-maker points out that the roles the characters play within the film become their masks and pretence to higher moral ground.
-
As in the previous volume, any pretence to scholarship goes out the window when no specific source is given for the great majority of quotations or the books from which analysis is drawn.
-
Had he been the kind of letterless country fellow, or bookless fellow whom the Baconians and Mr. Greenwood describe, the contemporary witnesses cited must have detected Will in a day; and the story of the "Concealed Poet" who really, at first, did the additions and changes in the Company's older manuscript plays, and of the inconceivably impudent pretences of Will of Stratford, would have kept the town merry for a month.
Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Great Unknown
-
And how would the time spent by the presenters of ‘happenings’ and other such phony pretences of art be measured?
-
The walk would be an in-the-flesh demonstration, without pomp and pretence, as to just how in touch with real life our officials at City Hall are, or are not.
-
Those that love to boast of their business and make a noise about it, and that waste their time in tittle-tattle, in telling and hearing new things, like the Athenians, and, under pretence of improving themselves by conversation, neglect the work of their place and day, they waste what they have, and the course they take tends to penury, and will end in it.
Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume III (Job to Song of Solomon)
-
Saoud had indeed once given orders, that none of these Turkish pilgrims, who still flocked from Yembo to this tomb, even after the interruption of the regular pilgrim-caravans, should any more be permitted to enter Medina: and this he did to prevent what he called their idolatrous praying; a practice which it was impossible to abolish without excluding them at once from the mosque; this prohibition Saoud did not think proper to enforce: he therefore preferred keeping them from the city, under pretence that their improper behaviour rendered such a proceeding necessary.
Travels in Arabia
-
With colleagues he was “tolerant (and) uncensorious” (Warnock, xiv), but in philosophical debate he could turn into a formidable opponent, expressing an intense dislike of pomposity, pretence and jargon (Urmson, 271; Gallop, 228).
Gilbert Ryle
-
He skulked into the room under the pretence of finding himself a drink.
-
The pretence of a socio-cultural vacuum is functional to avoid the moral nuisances that arise when we address cultural diversity with mainstreaming and resocialisation.
Culture Matters
-
FROM OVID. tjy retous churl, of unforgiving kind aider to the bloody prieft refign'd: iger was no plea; for that (he dy'd» it came next in order, to be tiy'd: it had cropt the tendrils of the viner since laity and clergy join, me had loft his profit, one his wine* is at leaft, fome (hadow of offence: ep was facrinVd on no pretence,,
The works of the English poets. With prefaces, biographical and critical, by S. Johnson
-
The pretence that they are working to unite the party will have gone.
Times, Sunday Times
-
The research project will focus on children's comprehension of pretence.
-
Chinese and Indian workers are more likely to skip off work under the false pretence of illness than their French and Mexican counterparts, a new study showed.
-
It is about time the party stopped its pretence of acting on behalf of all the people when the only people it represents are the well off, big business and the privileged.
-
WORDS ACCENTED ON THE LAST SYLLABLE: address _address'_ adept _adept'_ adult _adult'_ ally _ally'_ commandant _commandänt '(ä as in arm) _ contour _contour'_ dessert _dessert'_ dilate _dilate'_ excise _eksiz'_ finance _finance'_ grimace _grimace'_ importune _importune'_ occult _occult'_ pretence _pretence'_ research _research'_ robust _robust'_ romance _romance'_ tirade _tirade'_
Practical Grammar and Composition
-
On my last day, we abandoned all pretence of tourism and spent the day at my hotel.
Times, Sunday Times
-
She claimed that Proctors had cancelled lectures on the pretence of security fears in a deliberate attempt to divide student opinion.
-
Are we to suppose then that the insanity of the third character, the Fool, is, in this respect, a mere repetition of that of the second, the beggar, -- that it too is _mere_ pretence?
Shakespearean Tragedy Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
-
This utterly engaging and thoroughly likeable book masquerades under the pretence of being a search for ‘the perfect meal’.
-
It means that we let go of posturing and pretence and live simply as we are, in truth, at ease with ourselves and with others, not having to worry about who's up or who's down, who's in or who's out.
-
At the same time, she would inscribe a self that is so multiple and mutable as to subvert, by its very nature, any pretence to stability - much less the transcendence of a single identity.
-
This statement represents the old doctrine in regard to obtaining property by false pretences, to which I shall advert presently.
-
With skin the colour of milky tea and glassy eyes that betray his misery, there's never any pretence towards polished musicianship.
-
Zhou Yilun is very bold to abandon restraint, face to the most primitive and true instinct of human, and the desire, expansion, putridity and pretence that growing from instinct.
-
Eyebrows were often raised when a player would disappear suddenly from the tour, sometimes under false pretence.
Times, Sunday Times
-
A country that wants to see real improvements in real services - not posturing and pretence.
-
The first group make a living by pretence; the second are masters of subterfuge for whom truth, in the form of exposure, can be deadly.
-
By the end of the evening she had abandoned all pretence of being interested.
-
WORDS ACCENTED ON THE LAST SYLLABLE: address _address'_ adept _adept'_ adult _adult'_ ally _ally'_ commandant _commandänt '(ä as in arm) _ contour _contour'_ dessert _dessert'_ dilate _dilate'_ excise _eksiz'_ finance _finance'_ grimace _grimace'_ importune _importune'_ occult _occult'_ pretence _pretence'_ research _research'_ robust _robust'_ romance _romance'_ tirade _tirade'_
Practical Grammar and Composition
-
The thieves got into the house under false pretences, by saying they had come to repair the water taps.
-
Accordingly, the Pithamarda should bring the man to her house, under the pretence of seeing the fights of quails, cocks, and rams, of hearing the mania (a kind of starling) talk, or of seeing some other spectacle, or the practice of some art; or he may take the woman to the abode of the man.
The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana
-
With regard to truth, then, the intermediate is a truthful sort of person and the mean may be called truthfulness, while the pretence which exaggerates is boastfulness and the person characterized by it a boaster, and that which understates is mock modesty and the person characterized by it mock-modest.
The Nicomachean Ethics
-
This call for honesty, the dropping of macho pretence, is central.
Times, Sunday Times
-
‘By recognizing such a pretence, as a legitimate apology,’ he declared, ‘we authorize the tippler to tipple on.’
-
Be niggards of advice on no pretence, For the worst avarice is that of Sense.
-
Now all pretence was laid aside, and the knights arrayed themselves in their full battle gear and rode out on their previously concealed chargers to meet the enemy.
-
I can not tell what it is that letteth me, from causing thee to be caste foorthe amonges the Lions (cruell and capitall enemies of adulterie, amonges themselues) sithe thy pretence is, by violating my chastitie to dishonour the house, whereunto thou owest no lesse, then al the aduancements thou hast: from the taste whereof thou hast abandoned
The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1
-
This statement represents the old doctrine in regard to obtaining property by false pretences, to which I shall advert presently.
-
I found that to mix in the world, it is necessary not only to have an attaghan, but also to have the courage to use it; and in several broils which took place, from my too frequent use of the water of the Giaour, I invariably proved, that although my voice was that of a lion, my heart was but as water, and the finger of contempt was but too often pointed at the beard of pretence.
The Pacha of Many Tales
-
Altman strips away the pretence and mythology to expose the film industry as a business like any other.
-
He speaks, indeed, without artifice or pretence.
Times, Sunday Times
-
On the pavement a woman with no pretence to fashion (or else obedient to an ugly fashion) came past, too brightly dressed in a sack overcoat of goatskin; but no, it was not a woman, it was a chauffeur who, enveloped in his ponyskin, was proceeding on foot to his garage.
The Captive
-
Faces were stripped of pretence by the pitiless bombardment of harsh reality.
-
‘I once told a massager he had magic hands, that was embarrassing,’ I blurted, without thought to set up the background of my story or pretence.
-
He can even be forgiven for terming some of the ringleaders of the dissatisfaction ‘rotten tomatoes’, as it seems clear they got some staff to sign a petition under false pretences.
-
The stock-market became a ‘people-friendly’ place with no space for snobs, hierarchies, elitism and pretence.
-
At length the hour of noon arrived; she had taken care to provide, under pretence of her own wishes, which the pantler seemed disposed to indulge, such articles of food as could be the most easily conveyed to the unhappy captive.
The Fair Maid of Perth
-
Following Bismarck's lead, both of them had dropped the pretence of calling me "highness" -- Bersonin's "theory", as Bismarck had called it, being well enough in my training period, I suppose, but now considered unnecessary.
Royal Flash
-
The novel is also natural in the sense of man's everyday life, done without pretence and pose.
