pretense

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)The action of pretending; false or simulated show or appearance; false or hypocritical assertion or representation.

   “He visited the king under the pretense of friendliness.”

   “"Lady Little", the title that she used, was just a pretense.”

   “She appeared to weep uncontrollably, but it was all pretense.”

   “Great armaments were, therefore, put on foot in Moravia and Bohemia, while the elector of Saxony, under a pretence of military parade, drew together about ſixteen thouſand men, which were poſted in a ſtrong ſituation at Pirna.”

   “The London Saturday Review pays the following well-merited compliment to two American lady authors: “Very few of even our best writers can compass a book for the young which shall be all that it ought to be, avoiding, on the one hand, extravagant sensationality and a standard so high as to be outside human nature altogether; on the other, vapid silliness, which no grown girl can accept as fitting food for her mind at all, and which irritates, as all pretense and make-believe must.[…]””

2. (uncountable)Affectation or ostentation of manner.

   “She was a plain-speaking woman without a hint of pretense.”

3. (countable, uncountable)Intention or purpose not real but professed.

   “with only a pretense of accuracy”

4. (countable, uncountable)An unsupported claim made or implied.

   “He was gentlemanly, steady, tractable, with a thorough knowledge of his duties; and in time, when yet very young, he became chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by those events of the sea that show in the light of day the inner worth of a man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal the quality of his resistance and the secret truth of his pretences, not only to others but also to himself.”

   “They wished to demask hidden metaphysics, to demask the false pretenses of sentences purportively descriptive but de facto metaphysical or evaluative.”

5. (countable, uncountable)An insincere attempt to reach a specific condition or quality.
6. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)Intention; design.

   “A very pretence and purpose of unkindness.”