pretended

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past tense and past participle of pretend.

   He pretended not to notice the error during the meeting.

   They had pretended interest in the proposal for weeks before withdrawing.

   Note

   A regular -ed form that does double duty. In "he pretended" it is the simple past, and in "they had pretended" or "it was pretended" it is the participle after have or be. It carries every meaning of pretend, including the formal one of laying claim to an ability or status. Placed before a noun, the same spelling becomes the adjective meaning "feigned".

2. 2
   adjective

   Falsely presented as real or genuine; feigned or counterfeit.

   The spy maintained a pretended loyalty to the regime for years.

   Their pretended generosity masked a purely selfish motive.

   Similarfeigned, false, fake, sham, affected

   Oppositegenuine, real, sincere, true

   Note

   An adjective that sits before its noun and marks a role or quality as a sham. Melville Davisson Post's "The Man Hunters" (1916) has a room leased to a pretended tradesman, meaning a man posing as one. It takes no degrees, so "more pretended" is not idiomatic. It keeps the verb's sense of a deliberate performance, a disguise kept up rather than a mere mistake.

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