How to Use pretentious in a Sentence

pretentious

adjective

• The houses in the neighborhood are large and pretentious.
• But one girl saw the stone and thought it a pretentious thing to do.
  — Louise Erdrich, The New Yorker, 2 Sep. 2019
• That doesn’t change the fact that those pretentious snobs can make some of the greatest works in the world.
  — Addie Morfoot, Variety, 12 Nov. 2022
• Singing sweet tunes about wanting to be a young adult again is a bit pretentious.
  — cleveland.com, 25 Aug. 2017
• Does it get much less pretentious than gooey cheese curds?
  — Griffin Jackson, chicagotribune.com, 6 Oct. 2017
• These guys weren’t pretentious, and there weren’t these walls.
  — Brian McCollum, Detroit Free Press, 17 Apr. 2022
• Even our waiter — who was so over the whole thing — called it pretentious.
  — Mike Sutter, ExpressNews.com, 2 Jan. 2020
• The vibe of this full moon is talkative, loud, and even pretentious.
  — Sophie Saint Thomas, Allure, 25 Apr. 2022
• Pop culture had, in the past, spoofed and satirized the pretentious wine drinker.
  — Alex Abad-Santos, Vox, 17 July 2019
• There’s nothing pretentious or high and mighty about him.
  — Washington Post, 18 Nov. 2021
• Bottles range from about a pound at the light end to more than two pounds for those pretentious behemoths.
  — Washington Post, 15 Oct. 2021
• Notice that as always the crime, the great shame, is the social one, to seem pretentious.
  — John Jeremiah Sullivan, GQ, 28 Jan. 2018
• Everyone wants to be cool, no one wants to be pretentious.
  — Peggy Noonan, WSJ, 5 Apr. 2018
• These wooly, small- to medium-sized pups aren't pretentious in the least.
  — Katarina Avendano, Good Housekeeping, 25 Aug. 2022
• If that’s not the most pretentious thing that anybody’s ever said.
  — Andrew Unterberger, Billboard, 25 Oct. 2022
• Her goal is to make wine less pretentious and more approachable.
  — San Diego Union-Tribune, 23 Sep. 2019
• The series has always struck me as more pretentious than profound.
  — Kristi Turnquist, OregonLive.com, 4 June 2017
• This will strike some of you as very, very pretentious and self-indulgent, but bear with me.
  — Momus, WIRED, 16 Jan. 2007
• People have called me an ogre and a pretentious feminist.
  — Sarah Wu, Teen Vogue, 6 July 2017
• If all of this sounds dreadfully pretentious to you, well, step off.
  — Jason Pettigrew, SPIN, 17 Aug. 2022
• To that end, each item is crafted by hand, without pretentious airs or hefty price tags.
  — Tribune News Service, cleveland, 29 Dec. 2020
• There are no singed orange peels held over pretentious glassware here.
  — Esquire Editors, Esquire, 25 May 2017
• Too big, too pretentious and then there is the near windowless media bunker.
  — John Cherwa, latimes.com, 29 Sep. 2017
• This cult of contemporary name art that is just so pretentious.
  — David A. Keeps, House Beautiful, 11 Apr. 2012
• If this sounds both ambitious and pretentious to you . . .
  — Terry Teachout, WSJ, 21 Oct. 2021
• Ben gaslights the hell out of Ana, but the weird pretentious writer from earlier believes her.
  — Emma Specter, Vogue, 18 Mar. 2022
• Or whatever the less pretentious-sounding version of that is.
  — Alex Delany, Bon Appetit, 23 Apr. 2018
• Go to a famous, cold museum, full of art that is both pretentious and boring.
  — Grace Henes, The New Yorker, 23 Aug. 2022
• The first thing is that even though these Roman numerals are sort of pretentious, using them is a lot of fun.
  — Washington Post, 3 Feb. 2020
• The Beatles were too cheery, and Prince seemed pretentious.
  — David Marchese, New York Times, 18 Mar. 2022

Last Updated: 27 Mar 2024