pretext

noun

1. A false, contrived, or assumed purpose or reason; a pretense.

   “The reporter called the company on the pretext of trying to resolve a consumer complaint.”

   “[T]hey would ſay [...] that I had quarrell'd / My brother purpoſely, thereby to finde / An apt pretext, to baniſh them my houſe.”

   “"After all," said the Chevalier, "these portraits—Madame de I'Hôpital's fortune-telling—the pleasure we take in a lover or a physician—may all be referred to the same cause,—we do so enjoy talking about ourselves; and yet we feel some sort of excuse necessary. It must be admitted, that we are ready in pretexts."”

   “On every kind of pretext she would run away from work [...]”

   “The smallest incidents were to serve as pretexts for demonstrations of force and for demands for indemnities and reparations which increased China's subjection.”

verb

1. To employ a pretext, which involves using a false or contrived purpose for soliciting the gain of something else.

   “The spy obtained his phone records using possibly-illegal pretexting methods.”

   “[…] the something in the air of these establishments; the vibration of the vast, strange life of the town; the influence of the types, the performers, concocting their messages; the little prompt Paris women arranging, pretexting goodness knew what, driving the dreadful needle-pointed public pen at the dreadful sand-strewn public table[…]”

   “Not all the surviving veteran chiefs would actually fight. Some remained nominally in the resistance but in practice delayed at their bases, pretexting a lack of ammunition for their uncertain inertia.”