PRETEND • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Pretend

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/pritˈɛnd/ Listen

verb

Pretend v. t. (past & past part. pretended; pres. part. pretending)

1.

To lay a claim to; to allege a title to; to claim. "Chiefs shall be grudged the part which they pretend."

2.

To hold before, or put forward, as a cloak or disguise for something else; to exhibit as a veil for something hidden. (R.) "Lest that too heavenly form, pretended To hellish falsehood, snare them."

3.

To hold out, or represent, falsely; to put forward, or offer, as true or real (something untrue or unreal); to show hypocritically, or for the purpose of deceiving; to simulate; to feign; as, to pretend friendship. "This let him know, Lest, willfully transgressing, he pretend Surprisal."

4.

To intend; to design; to plot; to attempt. (Obs.) "Such as shall pretend Malicious practices against his state."

5.

To hold before one; to extend. (Obs.) "His target always over her pretended."

Pretend v. i.

1.

To put in, or make, a claim, truly or falsely; to allege a title; to lay claim to, or strive after, something; usually with to. "Countries that pretend to freedom." "For to what fine he would anon pretend, That know I well."

2.

To hold out the appearance of being, possessing, or performing; to profess; to make believe; to feign; to sham; as, to pretend to be asleep. "(He) pretended to drink the waters."

See images of 'Pretend'

Etymology of 'Pretend'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Pretend" Quotes from Famous Books

... next week," she wrote, "though what possible benefit can accrue from our returning I cannot pretend to say. Either home is distasteful to me; so is the rest of the world; so are the people in it. Enviable condition, is it not? I seem to be afflicted with a sort of dreadful mental indigestion. Everything ...

— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... very distinctly. "I've got a tip for you. Pretend that you want to make something like the gadget that stops winds and warms places. ...

— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster

... as they pretend to sleep, are crazy for their coffee," she smiled, "but they've got to wait, like people at a circus do, till the animals are fed. The older folks get, the earlier they go to bed and the earlier they rise. Heaven only knows where it will end. If ...

— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... prosecuting attorney, there was always some son, son-in-law or nephew, fitted by domestic training, by a technical apprenticeship, by moral adaptation, not only to perform the duties of the office, but to be contented in it, pretend to nothing beyond it, not to look above himself with regret or envy, satisfied with the society around him, and feel, moreover, that elsewhere he would be out ...

— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... fact that the voyager learns to take an exquisite, but quite rational, delight in the mere act of eating. I know that I ought to speak as though dinner were an ignoble institution; I know that the young lady who said, "Thanks—I rarely eat," represented a class who pretend to devote themselves to higher joys; but I decline to talk cant on any terms, and I say that the healthy, hearty hunger bestowed by the open sea is one of ...

— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

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