as in fraud
one who makes false claims of identity or expertise
it turns out that the guy who claimed to work for a modeling agency was just a pretender
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of pretender
The contenders, pretenders and everybody in between.
—
Andrew Callahan, Boston Herald, 25 Sep. 2025
Adjustments will be made, and by November and December, there will be a much clearer picture of who the contenders and pretenders are.
—Mark Lasota, Forbes.com, 16 Sep. 2025
Crazy as this sport is, all four teams might be pretenders.
—Ken Rosenthal, New York Times, 10 Sep. 2025
Knotts took that wide-eyed, wiry, fidgety frame and used it to create the great underdogs and pretenders.
—Steve Belanger, HollywoodReporter, 10 Sep. 2025
See All Example Sentences for pretender
Andrew Callahan, Boston Herald, 25 Sep. 2025
Adjustments will be made, and by November and December, there will be a much clearer picture of who the contenders and pretenders are.
—Mark Lasota, Forbes.com, 16 Sep. 2025
Crazy as this sport is, all four teams might be pretenders.
—Ken Rosenthal, New York Times, 10 Sep. 2025
Knotts took that wide-eyed, wiry, fidgety frame and used it to create the great underdogs and pretenders.
—Steve Belanger, HollywoodReporter, 10 Sep. 2025
See All Example Sentences for pretender
Recent Examples of Synonyms for pretender
Noun
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New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a federal judge Friday to dismiss a mortgage fraud case against her, calling it a vindictive and politically motivated prosecution brought at the behest of a president who regards her as an enemy.—
Dave Smith,
Fortune,
8 Nov. 2025
-
Quick action can sometimes limit further loss or help investigators trace the fraud.—
Kurt Knutsson,
FOXNews.com,
8 Nov. 2025
Noun
-
Why fakes — and how to spot them An information vacuum seems to have encouraged imposters.—
Lee Ying Shan,
CNBC,
9 Nov. 2025
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Over the next three days, authorities say Buzzard appeared to swap wigs, trading fake, honey blonde curls for a darker wig closer to the style Melodee was seen in.—
Elizabeth Wolfe,
CNN Money,
8 Nov. 2025
Noun
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In return, the WNBA would argue the decertification is a sham to facilitate antitrust litigation.—
Michael McCann,
Sportico.com,
31 Oct. 2025
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For a bedding refresh, this duvet cover set is available in 26 colors and includes matching shams.—
Rachel Trujillo,
PEOPLE,
26 Oct. 2025
Noun
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In another film with a less happy outcome, the woman who claims to be the amnesiac’s wife is an impostor who ends up torturing him.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
24 Oct. 2025
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McKelway, who wrote for the magazine from the nineteen-thirties to the sixties, specialized in true-crime stories, bringing to life a gallery of scamps and swindlers and impostors.—
David Grann,
New Yorker,
19 Oct. 2025
Noun
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Islamic eschatology warned of a deceiver who distorts perception, blurring reality.—
Kaif Shaikh,
Interesting Engineering,
15 Aug. 2025
Noun
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The 1886 hotel was once an experimental hospital set up by infamous charlatan Norman Baker.—
Noreen Kompanik,
Boston Herald,
26 Oct. 2025
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Professional historians denounced Fomenko as a charlatan, but his countless fans remained undeterred.—
Foreign Affairs,
Foreign Affairs,
21 Oct. 2025
Noun
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To tell the truly venomous from the fakers, there are a couple details to help distinguish the two.—
Kirsten Fiscus,
Nashville Tennessean,
17 Sep. 2025
Noun
-
Caricatured by Honoré Daumier and his lesser followers always as a mountebank, a charlatan, a circus clown, Louis Napoleon could normalize the extent of his outrages by the seeming harmlessness of his absurdities.—
Adam Gopnik,
New Yorker,
13 June 2025
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With tariffs on pharmaceuticals, the mountebank of Mar-A-Lago wants to punish a small democracy of 5.3 million people that for the past 60 years has worked its way into the top table of drug research and production: Ireland.—
Kevin Rennie,
Hartford Courant,
29 Mar. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Pretender.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/pretender. Accessed 11 Nov. 2025.
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