Word.ws English Dictionary

prætension

prætension is the obsolete spelling of pretension.

Meaning of pretension

Noun

pretension (countable and uncountable, plural pretensions)

  1. A claim or aspiration to a particular status or quality.
    • As a foreign stamp gazette it is nowhere. An article on Stamp Collecting, by J. E. Gray, “reprinted from one of his books,” and a catalogue of stamps constitute its sole attraction. We are surprised to find such sounding pretentions so poorly supported.1872, “Reviews of Postal Publications”, in The Stamp-Collector's Magazine, volume 10, page 110
  2. Pretentiousness.

See all 4 meanings of pretension

Forms of prætension

pluralprætensions

Questions about prætension

What is prætension the obsolete spelling of?
Prætension is the obsolete spelling of pretension.

Words near prætension in the dictionary

  1. prætences
  2. prætend
  3. prætends
  4. prætense
  5. prætenses
  6. prætension
  7. prætensions
  8. prætentious
  9. præter-
  10. præterite
  11. præterition

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prætension (page history and authors); pretension (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “prætension.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pr%C3%A6tension. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.