(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".
Smug
Definition:
(a.) Studiously neat or nice, especially in dress; spruce; affectedly precise; smooth and prim.
(v. t.) To make smug, or spruce.
Example Sentences:
(1) "Anne Hathaway at least tried to sing and dance and preen along to the goings on, but Franco seemed distant, uninterested and content to keep his Cheshire-cat-meets-smug smile on display throughout."
(2) What's more, his genial stiffness and shy self-awareness give him a kind of awkward dignity compared to the preening smugness of Cruz.
(3) It might be worth looking at how others do it, and not smugly concluding that the public likes the NHS the way it is.
(4) He is far too astute an analyst of comedy to be unaware of the danger of looking smug and there were sufficient layers of irony and knowing jokes within jokes for the conceit to work.
(5) I smiled smugly – there’s nothing like praise from a kindred spirit.
(6) And he provided the catalyst that improved the lot of the player in what had become an exceedingly smug game.
(7) Our political class is indeed the pinnacle of smug regurgitation.
(8) Meanwhile, eco-triumphalists will witter smugly about how the ban will save - what was it again?
(9) He had to do more than opt out of the yah-boo , smug sixth-form wordplay of the House of Commons.
(10) Dave meanwhile lapsed into his shrill Bullingdon Club persona; the dividing line between self confidence and smugness is gossamer thin for the prime minister.
(11) Before a ferociously red crowd, in which the Australian fans, scattered throughout the stadium in little blobs of yellow, struggled to assert themselves in any meaningful way, the Chileans started with their customary disregard for defence, a line of five attackers purring forward with gushing, almost smug intent.
(12) Softness and tenderness, wistful ironies” he conceded as blindspots, describing Motown as mere “foot fodder” but having a lot of time for relatively minor practitioners such as Joe Tex , who he saw as “hugely smug” but with “great charm and inventiveness”.
(13) The most likely comment to exasperate Serwotka is the assertion that they're fat cats, a smug drain on the public purse: of 301,000 members "we've got 30,000 people earning just above the minimum wage, 100,000 earning less than £15,000 [the average civil service salary is £22,000].
(14) Maurice Vassie Deighton, North Yorkshire • If recent history is anything to go by, then Jeremy Corbyn has every chance of being elected prime minister ( Why smart Tories should not be smug about Corbyn , 27 July).
(15) Among other things, the novels work as a meditation on America's Calvinist conscience, its strengths and blindnesses, and the way that it moved from fanaticism to smugness in the century after the civil war.
(16) It satirises the smug, modernist home-owners often seen in the pages of US interiors magazine Dwell.
(17) This kind of smugness is always given short shrift by the elderly.
(18) Feminism , according to Moran, is "simply the belief that women should be as free as men – however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be.
(19) With incredible complacency, politicians from both sides of parliament basked in the glory and reacted smugly when the US and the eurozone hit a brick wall.
(20) They can be insufferably smug, much more so than the people who knew they had achieved advancement not on their own merit but because they were, as somebody's son or daughter, the beneficiaries of nepotism.