(v. t.) To lay a claim to; to allege a title to; to claim.
(v. t.) To hold before, or put forward, as a cloak or disguise for something else; to exhibit as a veil for something hidden.
(v. t.) To hold out, or represent, falsely; to put forward, or offer, as true or real (something untrue or unreal); to show hypocritically, or for the purpose of deceiving; to simulate; to feign; as, to pretend friendship.
(v. t.) To intend; to design; to plot; to attempt.
(v. t.) To hold before one; to extend.
(v. i.) To put in, or make, a claim, truly or falsely; to allege a title; to lay claim to, or strive after, something; -- usually with to.
(v. i.) To hold out the appearance of being, possessing, or performing; to profess; to make believe; to feign; to sham; as, to pretend to be asleep.
Example Sentences:
(1) His anti-politics act may just be a shtick – pretending he's still on Have I Got News for You, satirising politics even though he's right at the centre of it – but it liberates him from the usual constraints.
(2) "Obviously [writers in translation] have a disadvantage and there's no sense pretending they don't, of being read in translation," said Gekoski.
(3) Tony Abbott pretended to support the renewable energy industry before the election but is now “launching a full-frontal attack” according to Labor’s environment spokesman Mark Butler.
(4) The Telegraph's secret taping of Cable and fellow Liberal Democrat ministers while pretending to be concerned constituents has raised eyebrows in some media quarters, but the newspaper has claimed a "clear public interest" defence for its actions.
(5) It is hard to tell who has really suffered, and who is only pretending.
(6) Respecting the frequency of invalidity this cancer pretends the second place among these diseases.
(7) When this parliament votes for another referendum as it inevitably will, thanks to the perpetual crutch that the Greens provide, let’s not pretend it reflects the will of the Scottish people, because it doesn’t.
(8) Non-doms could no longer pretend to live in Monaco while living in the UK for four working days a week.
(9) But equally, you’re ignoring how these people feel if you try and pretend they don’t feel their area is changing.
(10) Additionally, the Schmidt-Furlow investigators looked at instances where female interrogators had fondled prisoners, or pretended to splash menstrual blood upon them.
(11) Stewart Lee with a mask made of meat, pretending to be Canadian?
(12) Yes, there are other reasons why a boy might take a clock out of its casing & pretend he’d made it.
(13) It would be idle to pretend that Cameron doesn't have talents as a leader.
(14) Their leaders are charging round the country pretending they are going to get an overall majority, but in their heart of hearts they know it is not true, you can see it in their eyes.” The deputy prime minister, whose party has been in coalition with the Conservatives since 2010, said the next question for the public was “that since neither David Cameron or Ed Miliband are going to walk into Downing Street on their own, who is it the voters want at their side”.
(15) By pretending to ignore the scientific evidence, AquaBounty is doing readers a disservice.
(16) Pro-Europeans don't do themselves any favours by trying to pretend that it didn't happen.
(17) Indeed watching the prime minister singling out unemployed youngsters for uniquely punitive measures while pretending it is for their own good, cheered on by a gang of braying chums, it looks less like the behaviour of a national statesman and more like the petty vindictiveness of a schoolyard bully.
(18) And he must not pretend to be ignorant of the consequences of continuing to burn coal or take refuge in a "carbon cap" or some "target" for future emission reductions.
(19) During the collection of a one-hour spontaneous language sample from each child the experimenter pretended 20 times not to understand and asked, "What?"
(20) He would go around the communities and pretend to have a conversation with people but really his eyes were on the children playing," she says.
Sham
Definition:
(n.) That which deceives expectation; any trick, fraud, or device that deludes and disappoint; a make-believe; delusion; imposture, humbug.
(n.) A false front, or removable ornamental covering.
(a.) False; counterfeit; pretended; feigned; unreal; as, a sham fight.
(v. t.) To trick; to cheat; to deceive or delude with false pretenses.
(v. t.) To obtrude by fraud or imposition.
(v. t.) To assume the manner and character of; to imitate; to ape; to feign.
(v. i.) To make false pretenses; to deceive; to feign; to impose.
Example Sentences:
(1) The results indicated that smoke, as opposed to sham puffs, significantly reduced reports of cigarette craving, and local anesthesia significantly blocked this immediate reduction in craving produced by smoke inhalation.
(2) Five days later, the animals were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups: Group 1 received intracranial implantation of controlled-release polymers containing dexamethasone; Group 2 received intraperitoneal implantation of controlled-release polymers containing dexamethasone; Group 3 received serial intraperitoneal injections of dexamethasone; and Group 4 received sham treatment.
(3) In contrast sham-hemodialysis in group CA and group PS, respectively, did not result in significant increases in amino acid efflux from the leg implying that the protein catabolic effect of blood membrane contact depends on the chemical properties of dialysis membranes.
(4) Meanwhile Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, waiting anxiously for news of the scale of the Labour advance in his first nationwide electoral test, will urge the electorate not to be duped by the promise of a coalition mark 2, predicting sham concessions by the Conservatives .
(5) The plasma renin activity of the 1 day post-stenosis rats showed 65% higher activity than the sham controls with no significant change in the 30-60 days post-stenosis.
(6) The results indicate that, regardless of the photoperiod, no clear functional relationship can be found between the avian pineal gland and thyroid function, although a transitory increase in T4 levels was seen in both pinealectomized and sham-operated birds shortly after the operations.
(7) The amounts of erythropoietin produced in animals subjected to hepatectomy are significantly higher than those observed in sham-operated animals.
(8) However, stimulation of the release of NTLI by intraduodenal administration of oleic acid (0.2 ml) resulted in significantly higher p-NTLI levels in the nephrectomized rats than in the sham operated rats.
(9) Three groups of male rats received lesions of AP and another 3 groups received sham lesion.
(10) Pretreatment with CV6209 had no significant influence on these parameters in sham-operated animals.
(11) We found that kidney extracts from 6 h and 24 h uninephrectomized rats increased [3H]thymidine incorporation into tubular cell DNA, dose-dependently, compared to those from sham-operated rats.
(12) The sizes of adrenaline (A) and noradrenaline (N) cells in the adrenal medulla of nonoperated (NO), sham-operated (SPX), and pinealectomized (PX) male rats (n = 126) were investigated by quantitative light microscopy.
(13) The concentrations and total content of the nicotinamide nucleotides were measured in the livers of rats at various times after partial hepatectomy and laparotomy (sham hepatectomy) and correlated with other events in the regeneration process.
(14) The volume densities of the differing strial components from steroid-administered animals were determined to approximate those of sham-adrenalectomized animals in general.
(15) With five daily 1-hr occlusions of the hepatic artery, rats benefited from significantly reduced tumor growth rates compared with controls that underwent sham operation (P less than 0.05).
(16) In the dynamic phase the weight of interscapular brown adipose tissue was significantly increased in the VMH-lesioned rats, but the specific GDP binding was depressed both in the morning and afternoon when compared with either the sham-operated or PVN-lesioned groups.
(17) There were no changes in the joints which had sham operations.
(18) In contrast, in Px-SUC both masses were comparable to the sham groups.
(19) Only at 3 days did total plasma volume of SAD rats show a modest reduction of about 16% (P less than 0.05 vs. sham-operated plus unoperated controls).
(20) The binding of 125I-labeled epidermal growth factor (EGF) was compared in acini isolated from the regenerating remnant following 90% partial pancreatectomy (ppx) and from the pancreas of sham-pancreatectomized (sham-ppx) rats.