Plural of pretense

regular plural

The plural of pretense is pretenses.

Forms of pretense

They wished to demask hidden metaphysics, to demask the false pretenses of sentences purportively descriptive but de facto metaphysical or evaluative.1968, Gerard Radnitzky · · Snippet view, Contemporary Schools of Metascience, page 114
She enrolled at the university under false pretenses, giving an invented birth date and lying about her qualifications.From the entry false pretense
Another $1.72 billion represents the amount FTX raised from investors on false pretenses, and $1.3 billion accounts for the money that Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency trading firm owed lenders, prosecutors said.2024 March 29, Eva Rothenberg, “Sam Bankman-Fried has to repay $11 billion. How can he possibly do that?”, in CNN Business. From the entry FTX
Cho was accusing him of luring him there under false pretenses; she said that he had promised her a hundred and fifty Chocolate Frog cards if she showed up.2003, J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Scholastic Press, page 462. From the entry bauble

noun The action of pretending; false or simulated show or appearance; false or hypocritical assertion or representation.
noun Affectation or ostentation of manner.
noun Intention or purpose not real but professed.

What is the plural of pretense?: The plural of pretense is pretenses.
Is pretense countable?: Pretense is a countable and uncountable noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: pretense (page history and authors) and the entries of its forms. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws left out forms marked obsolete, archaic, rare or dialectal and added the examples. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “Plural of pretense.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/plural/pretense. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.