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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Examples of pretender in a Sentence
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And yet, in and amongst this desperate reporting, a silent pretender has emerged in the form of Vans slip-ons.
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Daniel Rodgers, Vogue, 25 July 2024
There is no better place than Wimbledon to examine the slim difference between winners and pretenders.
—Sally Jenkins, Washington Post, 6 July 2024
All that is left is a nearly operatic cast of figures: the isolated tsar, the supine patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, the treacherous courtiers, the money-grabbing warlords, and, finally, the audacious pretender—all of them acting according to the ancient scripts.
—Vladislav Zubok, Foreign Affairs, 28 June 2023
The kind of player who makes the Knicks a legitimate contender, not just a pretender incapable of getting over the hump in a series against the Boston Celtics, Milwaukee Bucks or a healthy Philadelphia 76ers team.
—Kristian Winfield, New York Daily News, 7 Feb. 2024
See all Example Sentences for pretender 
Daniel Rodgers, Vogue, 25 July 2024
There is no better place than Wimbledon to examine the slim difference between winners and pretenders.
—Sally Jenkins, Washington Post, 6 July 2024
All that is left is a nearly operatic cast of figures: the isolated tsar, the supine patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, the treacherous courtiers, the money-grabbing warlords, and, finally, the audacious pretender—all of them acting according to the ancient scripts.
—Vladislav Zubok, Foreign Affairs, 28 June 2023
The kind of player who makes the Knicks a legitimate contender, not just a pretender incapable of getting over the hump in a series against the Boston Celtics, Milwaukee Bucks or a healthy Philadelphia 76ers team.
—Kristian Winfield, New York Daily News, 7 Feb. 2024
See all Example Sentences for pretender
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pretender.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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“Pretender.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/pretender. Accessed 24 Oct. 2024.
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