Talk:pretentious

Prætentious façades
This word is very true for people of the 21 century, as plagues such as face book and my space have entered our lives people are more and more comparing themselves to each other and creating false alliaces. Maybe one day we will be happy with our real selves. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 164.11.204.51 (talk • contribs) 13:14, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

"Demanding of skill or daring"?
That's a new one on me, I've never seen or heard the word being used in anything other than a negative way...are you sure it's correct?

pretentious
I’ve never heard it used thus. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 21:36, 28 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Perhaps this came from someone seeing something like "pretentious challenge" in print and not seeing how the real meanings applied in context. I got 6 hits for "pretentious challenge" on g.b.c. DCDuring 11:47, 15 November 2007 (UTC)


 * See second definition on --BigBadBen 22:58, 17 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I am having trouble with this, but substituting the one word definition "ambitious" for the rfv sense (which is advanced by M-W as a synonym, it sounds much better. The definition needs to have something more about the notion of the "testing the limits of one's capabilities". DCDuring 00:35, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Do we need the note on English orthography? (T versus S in the suffix)
The entry currently says this:

"Note that pretentious is spelled with a ‘t’ (-tious), unlike related pretense, pretension. This is due to the French spelling: *-sious does not occur as an English suffix, though -sion and -tion both do."

Is this note about English orthography actually necessary? Dictionaries are very helpful if you are at risk of misspelling a word, but if there is one clearly correct spelling, then the role of the dictionary is typically to just show that spelling and not justify it. If this were an essay on English orthography, I would definitely agree with the point that *-sious does not occur in English (that I am aware of) whereas *-tious is quite common. The note mentions that *-sion and *-tion both exist, but why not mention that *-cion also exists as an Engish suffix and has (in etymological history) been used on quite a few of the same words? Currently extant English words ending in *-cion include coercion and suspicion, although at least suspicion was once spelled "suspition" [sic]. The C, S, and T in these suffices correspond to the same spoken phoneme, generally. Fluoborate (talk) 11:08, 13 February 2018 (UTC)