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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

pretender.

One who intends or purposes.

9 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/pɹɪˈtɛndəɹ/
  1. One who intends or purposes.

    obsolete · rare
  2. One who puts forth a claim, or who aspires to or aims at something; a claimant, candidate, or aspirant; now, one who makes baseless pretensions.

  3. One who puts forth a claim, or who aspires to or aims at something; a claimant, candidate, or aspirant; now, one who makes baseless pretensions. One who aspires to the hand of a woman in marriage; a suitor, a wooer.

    obsolete
  4. One who puts forth a claim, or who aspires to or aims at something; a claimant, candidate, or aspirant; now, one who makes baseless pretensions. A claimant to a throne or the office of a ruler; originally in a neutral sense, but now always applied to a claimant who is held to have no just title.

  5. One who pretends or lays claim to something; one who makes a profession, show, or assertion, especially without adequate grounds, falsely, or with intent to deceive; a dissembler, deceiver, charlatan, hypocrite.

  6. A person who professes beliefs and opinions that they do not hold.

Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *per- Proto-Indo-European *preh₂- Proto-Indo-European *-i Proto-Indo-European *préh₂i? Proto-Italic *prai Proto-Italic *prai- Latin prae- Proto-Indo-European *ten- Proto-Indo-European *tend- Proto-Indo-European *-eti Proto-Indo-European *téndeti Proto-Italic *tendō Latin tendō Latin praetendōbor. Anglo-Norman pretendreder. English pretend Proto-Indo-European *-yósder. Proto-Italic *-āzios Latin -āriusnom. Latin -āriusbor. Proto-Germanic *-ārijaz Proto-West Germanic *-ārī Old English -ere Middle English -ere English -er English pretender From pretend + -er.

verb
  1. To tender (a bid, etc.) in advance.

    uncommon
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *per- Proto-Indo-European *preh₂- Proto-Indo-European *-i Proto-Indo-European *préh₂i? Proto-Italic *prai Proto-Italic *prai- Latin prae-lbor. Middle English pre- English pre- English tender English pretender From pre- + tender.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.