<noun.attribute> under the guise of friendship he betrayed them
Pretense \Pre*tense"\, Pretence \Pre*tence\, n. [LL. praetensus, for L. praetentus, p. p. of praetendere. See {Pretend}, and cf. {Tension}.] 1. The act of laying claim; the claim laid; assumption; pretension. --Spenser.
Primogeniture can not have any pretense to a right of solely inheriting property or power. --Locke.
I went to Lambeth with Sir R. Brown's pretense to the wardenship of Merton College, Oxford. --Evelyn.
2. The act of holding out, or offering, to others something false or feigned; presentation of what is deceptive or hypocritical; deception by showing what is unreal and concealing what is real; false show; simulation; as, pretense of illness; under pretense of patriotism; on pretense of revenging C[ae]sar's death.
3. That which is pretended; false, deceptive, or hypocritical show, argument, or reason; pretext; feint.
Let not the Trojans, with a feigned pretense Of proffered peace, delude the Latian prince. --Dryden.
4. Intention; design. [Obs.]
A very pretense and purpose of unkindness. --Shak.
Usage: {Pretense}, {Pretext}. A pretense is something held out as real when it is not so, thus falsifying the truth. A pretext is something woven up in order to cover or conceal one's true motives, feelings, or reasons. Pretext is often, but not always, used in a bad sense.
And on the eighth day of questioning, she drops the pretense that she is Japanese and begins to give her real name.
The phone contract dispute "was the end to the pretense of any gentlemanliness" in the former Bell system, said Albert Halperin, a former common carrier chief at the Federal Communications Commission.
Ditto BAD Architecture, BAD Colleges, BAD Public Sculpture: The keys are pretense and showiness.
It's a small favor compared, for example, to the U.S. going along with the pretense that the Soviet Union is still a superpower at all by any measurement other than missile throwweights.
"The rhetoric about favoring democracy is no more than that. It's a pretense," said John Peeler, who heads the Center for the Study of the Americas at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.
"He's got a lot of energy, very little pretense, and is very good with people.
In fact, the Council's statement abandons all pretense of being based on scientific factors; it explicitly states that its comments go beyond the limits of the technical report of its panel.
The group also leveled a protest over what it termed "the continuing destruction of Ukraine by Russification," in which Ukrainian history and culture is being appropriated as Russian to create a pretense of unification, he said.
The pretense that Cardinal O'Connor is imposing a "religious test" in defiance of the Constitution is absurd. The constitution says that there shall be no religious test for public office; not that there shall be no religious test for religions.
That's bad news for Israel, which has never before faced a Syria that showed even a pretense of wanting peace.
Older anti-Castro activists make no pretense of objectivity. They say the museum has lost touch with the community it serves and the trauma suffered by Cubans oppressed and sometimes imprisoned in the homeland, and now separated from their families.
Moreover, silver has lost all pretense of being a monetary metal, says Ted Arnold, metals specialist for Merrill Lynch in London.
"We've got to all stop this pretense with there not being any additional revenues.
She apparently was lured to the plaza on the pretense of planning a civic tribute to her husband, Pennbank's Corry branch manager, Harry Weiner, investigators said.
They are disdainful toward the values of enterprise and full of vain professional pretense and pedantry.
March 7 Bangor (Maine) Daily News on John Tower: The controversy over the John Tower confirmation has been stripped of all pretense that it is driven by lofty motives.
Mrs. Waldman, a buyer for a small California retailer, claims that the Korean company lured her to Korea during an Asian trip on the pretense that it wanted to place an order.
Mr. Potapov confessed that he too was looking for the right way to look at some of the new works coming out in fiction in which, in his view, the writer speaks his mind so directly that any pretense at artistic artifice seems to have been abandoned.
But all pretense is dropped when a dozen heavily armed Contras arrive, some of them wearing U.S. Army fatigues, others captured Sandinista uniforms.