What's the difference between humble and pretentious?

Humble


Definition:

  • (superl.) Near the ground; not high or lofty; not pretentious or magnificent; unpretending; unassuming; as, a humble cottage.
  • (superl.) Thinking lowly of one's self; claiming little for one's self; not proud, arrogant, or assuming; thinking one's self ill-deserving or unworthy, when judged by the demands of God; lowly; waek; modest.
  • (a.) Hornless. See Hummel.
  • (v. t.) To bring low; to reduce the power, independence, or exaltation of; to lower; to abase; to humilate.
  • (v. t.) To make humble or lowly in mind; to abase the pride or arrogance of; to reduce the self-sufficiently of; to make meek and submissive; -- often used rexlexively.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) You get like three days where you have to show up?” But the younger rival managed to turn difficult questions into an opportunity to boast of his humble background and promise of change.
  • (2) Chelsea, racism and the Premier League’s role | Letters Read more Mighty Manchester United had just been humbled by lowly Leicester City, battered 5-3.
  • (3) The classic Jedi response to subservience can be seen in the contrast between Luke’s first meeting with C-3PO – “I see, Sir”; “You can call me Luke”; “I see, Sir Luke,”; “No, just Luke” – and Qui-Gon Jinn meeting Jar Jar Binks: “Mesa your humble servant”; “That won’t be necessary”.
  • (4) In line with his modest and humble public image, Francis exhibits a strong taste for Italian neorealist cinema, which eschewed Hollywood razzle-dazzle and told morally powerful stories set among the working class.
  • (5) As it has elevated "hygge" (cosiness) into a way of life, Copenhagen has elevated the humble bicycle into a cultural icon, a pillar of its image.
  • (6) Recalling the triumphant welcome into Jerusalem, Francis said Jesus "awakened so many hopes in the heart, above all among humble, simple, poor, forgotten people, those who don't matter in the eyes of the world".
  • (7) Celebrity and success came to him in the George Clooney tradition: when he was older and wiser and better at handling it, when a decade of scraping by in Hollywood, in every sense, had made him humble and more human.
  • (8) Beginning as a humble meat processor in 1955, Farmfoods opened its first experimental shop in Aberdeen in the early 1970s.
  • (9) And you have humbled me with your commitment to our country.
  • (10) Three precious points appeared to be theirs and they stood not only to crown a fightback that had hardly been trailed, but to soothe the pain of the 6-0 humbling at Chelsea from last Saturday.
  • (11) ?” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Boris Johnson ‘humbled’ to be appointed foreign secretary – video There was also bewilderment at Johnson’s appointment in Beijing’s diplomatic circles.
  • (12) Qatar’s royal family may have snapped up Canary Wharf for £2.6bn this week, adding to its London portfolio of Harrods and the Shard skyscraper, but the Gulf billionaires’ property spree has finally run into a dead end – a humble town hall bureaucrat.
  • (13) We honour Otis and his complete and humbling fascination with all things outdoors, big and small, near and far.
  • (14) Koroma said he was “humbled by the dedication” of 35,000 Ebola response workers “whose heroism is without parallel in the history of our country”.
  • (15) From humble roots in Philadelphia, he has more than once gained, lost and regained sway in LA showbusiness.
  • (16) Thus humbled, consider Goethe's admonition as a call to further scrutiny and investigation, "Theory and experience are opposed to each other in constant conflict.
  • (17) Tony Selznick , taught Bowie to roller-skate for the Day-In Day-Out video David came across as very humble and in between careers, almost.
  • (18) But Malala, who has interviewed her and followed her on the campaign trail, found Madikizela-Mandela less than humble.
  • (19) Siti’s mother, Benah, said the Indonesian attacker came from a humble village background.
  • (20) In return for the biggest bailout in global financial history – rescue funds from the EU and IMF amounting to €240bn (£188bn) – it was hoped that old mentalities would change and a nation humbled by near-bankruptcy would finally dump its culture of deceit.

Pretentious


Definition:

  • (a.) Full of pretension; disposed to lay claim to more than is one's; presuming; assuming.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But BrewDog’s astonishing growth may raise the uncomfortable possibility that in an age of media-savvy and brand-sceptical digital natives, ostentatious displays of “authenticity” – known to some as acting like pretentious hipster douchebags – may have become a necessary condition for success.
  • (2) All seven did at least try to give this dire and pretentious concept some life.
  • (3) To acknowledge that it must have seemed pretentious to enjoy 'This Charming Man' when Duran Duran was playing on the radio.
  • (4) If you ever feel tempted to say "status quo" or "cul de sac", for instance, Orwell will sneer at you for "pretentious diction".
  • (5) In one of the most pretentious sections, in traffic accidents of the type pedestrian--car, they want to attempt an interdisciplinary study the purpose of which is to obtain certain basic data for expert evaluation of the mechanism of fatal injuries of pedestrians, and a basis for assessing speed limits at sites of increased danger of this type of accidents.
  • (6) In Manhattan, she is cast as a pretentious, irksome snob of a journalist.
  • (7) The site also captions shots of the young and pretentious with lines such as: "Hold on, let me check to see if Topshop sells any iPhone purses."
  • (8) The most pretentious group are young patients working in industry.
  • (9) They're charged with posh-lad pretentiousness as a result, though I don't know it's all that uncommon for bands to plunder snatches of lyrics from wider culture.
  • (10) Newest methods are the technically very pretentious intraarterial perfusion with venous hemofiltration and the chemo-embolization of the hepatic artery requiring meanwhile an adjuvant systemic chemotherapy because the chemo-embolization influences only the arterially supplied part of the metastases.
  • (11) Speaking to Alec Wilkinson of the New Yorker, Springsteen remarked that Seeger "had a real sense of the musician as historical entity – of being a link in the thread of people who sing in others' voices and carry the tradition forward … and a sense that songs were tools, and, without sounding too pretentious, righteous implements when connected to historical consciousness".
  • (12) The detection of this preclinical stage in particular in sporadic cases is in common clinical practice, due to the low prevalence of the disease in the population and pretentious character as regards applied methods, unreal.
  • (13) People talk of "journalese" as though a journalist were of necessity a pretentious and sloppy writer; he may be, on the contrary, and very often is, one of the best in the world.
  • (14) They can now decide for themselves whether that font of wisdom, Halliwell's Film and Video Guide, gets it right by calling it 'a repulsive film in which intellectuals have found acres of significanceÉ it is pretentious and nasty rubbish for sick minds who do not mind jazzed-up images and incoherent sound'.
  • (15) Tom is a heavy metal fan who, as Matt says in the film, thinks indie rock is "pretentious bullshit"; the National are all around 40 with their carousing days behind them, so Tom brought the party himself, getting wasted on his own and filming himself for kicks.
  • (16) "You can call it a bacterial heat production effect if you are a pretentious scientist, or you can call it composting," he said.
  • (17) Describe your ideal audience member Russell Kane TR Discerning, critical, pretentious and stupid.
  • (18) With regard to the non-pretentious, simple and safe character and the high yield of the procedure the authors consider thin-needle biopsy under ultrasonographic control a foremost operation which makes morphological assessment even of diffuse liver diseases possible.
  • (19) The operation, though pretentious and time consuming, has the advantage of an extrathoracic approach.
  • (20) A broad swathe of the middle class, not just collectors, lap up the videos and pretentious installations he lambasts (he has never collected video), and dismiss any scepticism as "conservative".