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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Recent Examples of pretender
Ball could be that piece to turn the Rockets from pretenders to contenders.
—
Benedict Cosgrove, Newsweek, 19 Dec. 2024
Just this week alone, there's potential for some of these contenders to fall into the pretender pool.
—Chase Goodbread, The Tennessean, 20 Nov. 2024
The Bruins – and, yes, with their fair share of good luck – made their guests look like pretenders.
—Steve Conroy, Boston Herald, 8 Feb. 2024
In Saturday's game at Arizona (1:30 p.m., FOX) ASU has the chance to do something it's done only once before this century: go undefeated in November, the month in which good teams separate themselves from early-season pretenders.
—Matthew Self, The Arizona Republic, 26 Nov. 2024
See All Example Sentences for pretender
Benedict Cosgrove, Newsweek, 19 Dec. 2024
Just this week alone, there's potential for some of these contenders to fall into the pretender pool.
—Chase Goodbread, The Tennessean, 20 Nov. 2024
The Bruins – and, yes, with their fair share of good luck – made their guests look like pretenders.
—Steve Conroy, Boston Herald, 8 Feb. 2024
In Saturday's game at Arizona (1:30 p.m., FOX) ASU has the chance to do something it's done only once before this century: go undefeated in November, the month in which good teams separate themselves from early-season pretenders.
—Matthew Self, The Arizona Republic, 26 Nov. 2024
See All Example Sentences for pretender
Recent Examples of Synonyms for pretender
Noun
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Sunbeam ultimately filed for bankruptcy and the SEC sued Dunlap and other top executives for engineering a massive accounting fraud.—
Matt Schifrin,
Forbes,
21 Feb. 2025
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Julie was given a seven-year prison sentence after initially being indicted in August 2019 on bank fraud and tax evasion charges.—
Ashley Hume,
Fox News,
20 Feb. 2025
Noun
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But her choice ultimately comes down to a question of authenticity; the rich author is a liar and a fake, while the pickle man is the salt of the earth.—
Jason Bailey,
New York Times,
14 Feb. 2025
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Gabriela Jaquez could be moved with a screen, freshman Kendall Dudley bit on Watkins’ fakes, and Janiah Barker wasn’t disciplined enough to keep track of Watkins’ movement.—
Sabreena Merchant,
The Athletic,
14 Feb. 2025
Noun
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The breakdown of democracy in the United States will not give rise to a classic dictatorship in which elections are a sham and the opposition is locked up, exiled, or killed.—
STEVEN LEVITSKY,
Foreign Affairs,
11 Feb. 2025
-
The set includes a queen comforter and two matching pillow shams to create a cohesive look in the bedroom.—
Kelsey Fredricks,
Better Homes & Gardens,
26 Jan. 2025
Noun
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In Rankin’s short, Rankin himself plays an impostor posing as the not-so-famous Winnipeg filmmaker Matthew Rankin.—
Bilge Ebiri,
Vulture,
14 Feb. 2025
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After Elon Musk purchased Twitter and swiftly removed all content moderation, a substantial exodus flowed to weak impostors like BlueSky, Threads, and Mastodon.—
Yaakov Katz,
Newsweek,
17 Jan. 2025
Noun
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But Kennedy has a long, undistinguished record of relying on the work of charlatans to make wild charges, of not correcting the record when he is proven wrong, and then going to find more bad evidence to continue to make the same insinuations.—
The Editors,
National Review,
31 Jan. 2025
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That’s because the agency’s duty is to stand in the way of businesses desiring to push unsafe and ineffective nostrums at unwary consumers, and also in the way of a perverse idea that personal freedom includes the freedom to be gulled by charlatans.—
Michael Hiltzik,
Los Angeles Times,
17 Jan. 2025
Noun
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Gould observed that Jerry Falwell had taken up the mountebank’s mission of William Jennings Bryan.—
Michael Hiltzik,
Los Angeles Times,
26 July 2024
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Now, this pallid Color Purple epitomizes the artistic dearth of an era when a cultural mountebank like Winfrey uses race and feminist guile to cheat us of America’s most creative achievements.—
Armond White,
National Review,
3 Jan. 2024
Noun
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Milla — a young woman who feels disillusioned by doctors that treat her like a recalcitrant child, directing even conversations about her treatment to her father instead of her — finds false security in quacks selling enemas and juice cleanses.—
Angie Han,
The Hollywood Reporter,
5 Feb. 2025
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Trump’s Insane Clown Posse Cabinet is very close to being filled with a cadre of fools and quacks, goons and thugs.—
S.E. Cupp,
New York Daily News,
4 Feb. 2025
Articles Related to pretender
Cite this Entry
“Pretender.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/pretender. Accessed 3 Mar. 2025.
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