pretending

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of pretend.

   By pretending to agree, he avoided a long argument with his boss.

   The witness was pretending complete ignorance of the whole affair.

   Note

   One spelling does two grammatical jobs. After be it forms the progressive (was pretending complete ignorance). After a preposition or as a subject it is a gerund, which can still take an object or a to-clause (by pretending to agree). It carries every sense of pretend, including the formal one of laying claim, where to follows. The older senses of intending or plotting are obsolete.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of imagining or make-believe; behaving as though something untrue were real.

   Like a stage where ordinary objects become whatever the player imagines them to be.

   Their whole afternoon dissolved into pretending, with the living room becoming a pirate ship.

   Pretending lets a child rehearse the roles they will one day take on.

   Similarmake-believe, playacting, pretense

   Note

   Usually a mass noun, like play or make-believe: children drift into pretending rather than doing a pretending. The plural pretendings does exist. In children's speech the shorter noun pretend covers the same activity. Unlike the verb form, this noun names the whole activity and takes no object, so pretending is a game in itself, not pretending something.

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