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
The game was billed as a meeting between the club that wears the crown and the pretenders whose recent attempts to win the title have ended in the bitter disappointment of falling short.
From BBC ● Aug. 31, 2025
“Paul is building something special with a two-track career driven by his passion and an unrelenting quality that separates the pretenders from the contenders,” MLW Founder and CEO Court Bauer said.
From Seattle Times ● May 15, 2024
Friends turn into enemies and enemies become friends, among politicians and pretenders.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 20, 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
Masters of power politics, engineers of genius, the Mexica were also upstarts and pretenders, arrivistes who falsely claimed a brilliant line of descent.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
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.
