pretender
Americannoun
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a person who pretends, especially for a dishonest purpose.
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an aspirant or claimant (often followed byto ).
a pretender to the throne.
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a person who makes unjustified or false claims, statements, etc., as about personal status, abilities, intentions, or the like.
a pretender to literary genius.
noun
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a person who pretends or makes false allegations
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a person who mounts a claim, as to a throne or title
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of pretender
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the last shah of Iran and pretender to the throne, was a scheduled speaker, and the event was packed with Iranian monarchists.
From Slate ● Mar. 27, 2026
Like many previous movies about those who ply that physical trade, “Rental Family” explores the anguish of a paid pretender troubled by increasingly genuine feelings.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 20, 2025
Artists can sniff out genius from fakes, and Thanos sure looks like a parody of a pretender T.O.P. has encountered in the wild.
From Salon ● Jan. 5, 2025
Daniel Dubois was the heavyweight champion lacking a crowning moment, but on Saturday the young pretender from Greenwich legitimised his reign.
From BBC ● Sep. 22, 2024
“Honored ones, let me take this...this pretender, this prince of thieves, to the mines, where his words will be the only ones he hears in a long time.”
From "Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky" by Kwame Mbalia
Football is littered with any number of former pretenders to the Messi throne, all of whom have achieved and suffered varying degrees of success and adversity.
From BBC ● Jun. 4, 2026
What I love about Luton is they are not pretenders.
From BBC ● Apr. 12, 2024
Corny posers and pretenders didn’t care about sneakers the way we did; that feeling of opening up a box of new Jordan’s was something that we owned.
From Salon ● Feb. 23, 2024
That’s one short of a record for one regular-season weekend — not including conference title games — and an opportunity to identify serious playoff contenders, maybe expose pretenders and set the tone for conference races.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 20, 2023
“Opossums are the best dead pretenders in the world.”
From "Wishtree" by Katherine Applegate
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
