Noun

(en noun)

(label) An act of pretending or pretension; a false claim or pretext.

* 1819 , Oliver Goldsmith, Charles Coote, The History of England, from the Earliest Times to the Death of George the Second , Volume 3, p.115,

*:Great armaments were therefore put on foot in Moravia and Bohemia, while the elector of Saxony, under a pretence of military parade, drew together about sixteen thousand men, which were posted in a strong situation at Pima.

*

*:There is an hour or two, after the passengers have embarked, which is disquieting and fussy.Passengers wander restlessly about or hurry, with futile energy, from place to place. Pushing men hustle each other at the windows of the purser's office, under pretence of expecting letters or despatching telegrams.

*1995 , Charlie Lewis, Peter Mitchell, Children?s Early Understanding Of Mind: Origins And Development , p.281,

*:In pilot work we have used the method described in Experiment 2 on children?s memory for the content of their own false beliefs and pretence' and asked them to differentiate between belief and ' pretence .

*2005 , (Plato), Lesley Brown (translator), Sophist , .

*:That part of education that turned up in the latest phase of our argument, the cross-examination of the empty pretence of wisdom, is none other, we must declare, than the true-blooded kind of sophistry.

(label) Intention; design.

*(William Shakespeare) (c.1564–1616)

*:A very pretence and purpose of unkindness.

Noun

(en noun)

Any act of deception carried out for the purpose of unfair, undeserved and/or unlawful gain.

* Alexander Pope

If success a lover's toil attends, / Few ask, if fraud or force attained his ends.

* {{quote-book, year=2006, author=

, title=Internal Combustion , chapter=1 citation , passage=But electric vehicles and the batteries that made them run became ensnared in corporate scandals, fraud , and monopolistic corruption that shook the confidence of the nation and inspired automotive upstarts.}}

The assumption of a false identity to such deceptive end.

A person who performs any such trick.

(obsolete) A trap or snare.

* Milton

to draw the proud King Ahab into fraud