Word.ws English Dictionary

pretensions

pretensions is the plural 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

Questions about pretensions

What is pretensions the plural of?
Pretensions is the plural of pretension.

Words near pretensions in the dictionary

  1. pretensioned
  2. pretensioner
  3. pretensioners
  4. pretensioning
  5. pretensionless
  6. pretensions
  7. pretensive
  8. pretensively
  9. pretensiveness
  10. pretentative
  11. pretention

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pretensions (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: “pretensions.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pretensions. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.