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Pretender   Listen
noun
Pretender  n.  
1.
One who lays claim, or asserts a title (to something); a claimant. Specifically, The pretender (Eng. Hist.), the son or the grandson of James II., the heir of the royal family of Stuart, who laid claim to the throne of Great Britain, from which the house was excluded by law. "It is the shallow, unimproved intellects that are the confident pretenders to certainty."
2.
One who pretends, simulates, or feigns.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pretender" Quotes from Famous Books



... the poet's wrath. They, though professors of the Old Light, had quarrelled, and, it is added, fought: "The Holy Tulzie," which recorded, gave at the same time wings to the scandal; while for "Holy Willie," an elder of Mauchline, and an austere and hollow pretender to righteousness, he reserved the fiercest of all his lampoons. In "Holy Willie's Prayer," he lays a burning hand on the terrible doctrine of predestination: this is a satire, daring, personal, and profane. Willie claims praise in the singular, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... is the slavery of fashion! Notwithstanding their mortification, the unexpected costume of von Aslingen appeared only to increase the young lords' admiration of his character and accomplishments; and instead of feeling that he was an insolent pretender, whose fame originated in his insulting their tastes, and existed only by their sufferance, all cantered away with the determination of wearing on the next day, even if it were to cost them each a calenture, furs enough to keep a man warm during a winter party ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... paragraphs in the newspaper, sir," Hal answered. "Enough to know that some pretender in the country across the border is trying to upset the present ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock

... a personage I had not yet encountered, a small pale youth in showy knickerbockers, whose eyebrows and nose and the glued points of whose little moustache were extraordinarily uplifted and sustained. I remember taking him at first for a foreigner and for something of a pretender: I scarcely know why, unless because of the motive I felt in the stare he fixed on me when I asked Miss Saunt to come away. He struck me a little as a young man practising the social art of "impertinence"; but it didn't matter, for Flora ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... that of a gentleman in a long wig, and underneath it was painted in red letters "Sir Watkin Wynn: 1742." It was doubtless the portrait of the Sir Watkin who, in 1745 was committed to the tower under suspicion of being suspected of holding Jacobite opinions, and favouring the Pretender. The portrait was a very poor daub, but I looked at it long and attentively as a memorial of Wales at a critical and ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... discernment. And, moreover, I am thinking she has in her some of the gift of Second Sight that has been a heritage of our blood. And I am one with my niece—in everything!" The whole thing was quite regal in manner; it seemed to take me back to the days of the Pretender. ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... well be desired. All experience, if I mistake not, bears out his statement respecting the vividness of the memory during this period of life. In a recent trial, the most fatal blot in the evidence was the inability of a pretender to give any information respecting the games and studies, the companions, the familiar haunts, of the school and college days of the person with whom he identified himself. It is the penalty which mature age pays for clearer ideas and higher powers ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... put in his word, well garnished with oaths. "Now that there's war up and down and so many of us are going out of the country, there's a saying that the Pretender may e'en sail across from France and beat a drum and give a shout! Then there'll ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... to be the work of Lord Hervey. In these poems Pope was abused in the most unmeasured terms. His work was styled a mere collection of libels; he had no invention except in defamation; he was a mere pretender to genius. His morals were not left unimpeached; he was charged with selling other men's work printed in his name,—a gross distortion of his employing assistants in the translation of the 'Odyssey',—he ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... Spain. The two countries were technically at peace, but the object with which he was going out, with the moral and financial support of the Queen, was a corporate demonstration against Spain, of French, Portuguese, and English ships under the main command of Don Antonio, the Portuguese pretender; it was proposed to occupy Terceira in the Azores; and Drake and Hawkins entertained the highest hopes of laying their ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... two wars with Ferdinand, king of Naples, until the year 1492, and brought forward Renatus, duke of Lorraine, as pretender to his crown. True, he proceeded, as his predecessors had done, to encourage princes and people to undertake expeditions against the Turks; but when Dschem, the brother and rival of the Turkish Sultan Bajazet, was delivered over to him at the head of an ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... point of view. The incident is as much parable as miracle. That leafy tree was distinguished among fig trees; the others offered no invitation, gave no promise; "the time of figs was not yet"; they, in due season would bring forth fruit and leaves; but this precocious and leafy pretender waved its umbrageous limbs as in boastful assertion of superiority. For those who responded to its ostentatious invitation, for the hungering Christ who came seeking fruit, it had naught but leaves. Even for the ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... The pretender was accepted as an illustrious guest by Prince Wiszniowiecki, given clothes, horses, carriages, and suitable retinue, and presented to other Polish dignitaries. Dmitri, as he was thenceforth known, bore well the honors now showered upon him. He was at ease ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... fought at Naseby and Marston Moor for Charles, and suffered exile in his name. 'Twas love for King James that sent my father hither, though he swore allegiance to Anne and the First George. I can say with pride that he was no indifferent servant to either, refusing honours from the Pretender in '15, when he chanced to be at home. An oath is an oath, sir, and we have yet to be false to ours. And the King, say I, should, next to God, be loved and loyally served by his subjects. And so I have served this George, and his grandfather ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... who feels his hour has come, but who wonders which of his many delinquencies has come to light. He was large and florid, with a bald head and a dyed mustache, but his coloring was an unwholesome purple as the false pretender ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... then rose to welcome her visitor. A woman twenty years her senior, bright, capable, energetic, with a shrewd face and kindly eyes whose keen glance was quick to pierce the flimsy veil of humbug, and a tongue whose good-natured sarcasm had made more than one pretender feel ashamed. ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... of every artificer, gained a respectable name in the roll of British literature—but never, in any single instance, by attempting the construction of a ballad. That is the Shibboleth, by which you can at once distinguish the true minstrel from mere impostor or pretender. It is the simplest, and at the same time the sublimest form of poetry, nor can it be written except under the influence of that strong and absorbing emotion, which bears the poet away far from the present time, makes him an actor and a participator in the vivid scenes which he describes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... yesterday becoming the ignorant adulators of to-day: his position was conceded, but the hostility to Ruskin was sustained with unabated bitterness on the new field. He was demolished anew, and proved, many useless times over and over, an ignorant pretender; the public in the meanwhile, even his opponents, taking up in turn his proteges, as he pointed them out to their notice. The effect of his criticisms in enhancing the value of the works they approved would be incredible, if one ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... magnificent egotism might have provoked a smile. And yet, for all its grandiloquence, there was something in his speech that rang hard and true. Unquestionably Longorio was dangerous—a real personality, and no mere swaggering pretender. Alaire felt a certain reluctant respect for him, and at the same time a touch of chilling fear such as she had hardly experienced before. She faced him silently for a moment; then ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... to hear his suspicions of Randal confirmed. "The paltry pretender;—and yet I fancied that he might be formidable! However, we must dismiss him for the present,—we are approaching Madame di Negra's house. Prepare yourself, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... who took part in this divan were Catholics, and all of them stanch Jacobites, whose hopes were at present at the highest pitch, as an invasion, in favour of the Pretender, was daily expected from France, which Scotland, between the defenceless state of its garrisons and fortified places, and the general disaffection of the inhabitants, was rather prepared to welcome than to resist. Ratcliffe, who neither sought ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... details of their secret Penelope ran to him casting her arms about him and begging him to forgive her unbelief, for many a pretender had come, making her ever more and more suspicious. Thus reunited the two spent the night in recounting the agonies of their separation; Odysseus mentioned the strange prophecy of Teiresias, deciding to seek out his ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... moves among his fellow-men as a sort of privileged person; for who ever suspects him of being a rogue? His first attempt to deceive would defeat its own object, and prove him to be a mere pretender. His hand and voice must answer for his skill, and form the only true test of his abilities. If tuneless and bad, the public will ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... on her own responsibility. I venture to say that such unparalleled impudence was never witnessed out of the court of a justice of the peace, and that even Judge —— (unless the editor of the —— had interfered) would have marched this false pretender out of court, or have deposited her in the Tombs on an ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... wrong with the fair Morgiana. Was it that she had but little liking for the one pretender or the other? Was it that young Glauber, who acted Romeo in the private theatricals, was far younger and more agreeable than either? Or was it, that seeing a REAL GENTLEMAN, such as Mr. Walker, with whom she had had ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... conspiracy, then, ladies? A complete surprise of the fortress?" he asked. "You want to compel me forcibly to open the gates of my eyes to you? Do you not know, then, Josephine, that I have sworn not to accept any letters from the Pretender, in order not to be obliged to make a harsh reply ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... season. Then came the Roquefort, a regal cheese we voted the best buy of the lot, even though it was the most expensive. A plump piece, pleasantly unctuous but not greasy, sharp in scent, stimulatingly bittersweet in taste—unbeatable. There is no American pretender to the Roquefort throne. Ours is invariably chalky and tasteless. That doesn't mean we have no good Blues. We have. But they are ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown

... ask him to marry you," whispered that other self within her. Oh, if she could only guess which was the real self, which the pretender! "And there is no need. ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... of Austria, the queen-mother. Another identifies him with a supposed twin brother of Louis XIV., whose birth Richelieu had concealed. Others make him the Count of Vermandois, an illegitimate son of Louis XIV.; the Duke of Beaufort, a hero of the Fronde; the Duke of Monmouth, the English pretender of 1685; Fouquet, Louis's disgraced minister of finance; a son of Cromwell, the English protector; and various other wild and unfounded guesses. After all has been said, the identity of the prisoner remains unknown. Mattioli, a diplomatic agent of the Duke of Mantua, who was long ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... keenest perception, a resolute obedience to the dictates of justice, high incorruptibility, great learning, and thorough self-devotion to his beloved and chosen occupation. He has been largely accused of favoring, in his early manhood, the designs of the Pretender, yet, from the beginning to the close of his public life, his fidelity to the reigning family could not be called in question. He has been charged with gratifying prerogative at the expense of law, yet the liberty of the law was ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... request Should please me well; the wealthier I return'd, The happier my condition; welcome more And more respectable I should appear In ev'ry eye to Ithaca restored. To whom Alcinoues answer thus return'd. 440 Ulysses! viewing thee, no fears we feel Lest thou, at length, some false pretender prove, Or subtle hypocrite, of whom no few Disseminated o'er its face the earth Sustains, adepts in fiction, and who frame Fables, where fables could be least surmised. Thy phrase well turn'd, and thy ingenuous mind Proclaim thee diff'rent far, who hast in strains Musical ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... Scotland, Byron was placed by his mother under the care of an empirical pretender of the name of Lavender, at Nottingham, who professed the cure of such cases; and that he might not lose ground in his education, he was attended by a respectable schoolmaster, Mr Rodgers, who read parts of Virgil and Cicero ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... supposed to wish to reconquer the hand of the first lady and the direction of the dance; it is a kind of act of liberum veto, to which everyone is obliged to give way. The leader then abandons the hand of his lady to the new pretender; every cavalier dances with the lady of the following couple, and it is only the cavalier of the last couple who finds himself definitively ousted if he has not the boldness to insist likewise upon his privilege of equality by ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... hand sought his breast; then, swiftly realizing that it needed but a pretext to bring about the end desired by the pretender in the castle, with an effort he restrained himself, and ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... comedian: that is, a grand pretender, a self-deceiver At the age of forty, men that love love rootedly Hosts of men are of the simple order of the comic Men in love are children with their mistresses Providence and her parents were not forgiven She ran through delusion and delusion, exhausting each Trick for ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger

... Neither north nor south is yours, You've no kingdom that endures! Wandering every fall and spring, With your ruby crown so slender, Are you only a Pretender, Landless king? ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... him, and ask him to grapple, instead, with the history of but a few individual species,—with that of the mussel or the whelk, the clam or the oyster; and we find from his helpless ignorance and incapacity what a mere pretender he is. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... the Young Pretender, grandson of James II. of England, born at Rome, landed in Scotland (1745); issued a manifesto in assertion of his father's claims; had his father proclaimed king at Edinburgh; attacked and defeated General Cope at Prestonpans; marched at the head of his adherents ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Socrates was no fool—the populace was wrong—he was a man so natural and free from cant that he appeared to the triflers and pretenders like a pretender, and they asked, "Is ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... midst of any civil war that we have had in England during the last two hundred years than in some parts of Ireland at the present moment. Rather, much rather, would I have lived on the line of march of the Pretender's army in 1745 than in Tipperary now. It is idle to threaten us with civil war; for we have it already; and it is because we are resolved to put an end to it that we are called base, and brutal, and bloody. Such are the epithets which the honourable ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... joy; Love seeks not place, all places are the same, When lighted by the radiance of love's flame. Who deems proud love could fawn to power and splendour Hath known not love, but some base-born pretender. ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... pretenders and charlatans of all sorts, while he is himself a pretender, as all men are who assume a character which does not belong to them and affect to be something which they are all the time conscious they ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... balls, and a certain chum of mine—a Joe Atlee—of whom you may have heard—under-took, simply by a series of artful rumours as to my future prospects—now extolling me as a man of fortune and a fine estate, to-morrow exhibiting me as a mere pretender with a mock title and mock income—to determine how I should be treated in this family; and he would say to me, "Dick, you are going to be asked to dinner on Saturday next"; or, "I say, old fellow, they're going to leave you out of that ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... John Murray, late Secretary to the Pretender, was on Thursday night carried off by a party of strange men, from a house in Denmark Street, near St. Giles's church, where he had lived some time." —MS. Diary quoted in Collet's ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various

... the following circumstance, which shows that a sense of honour may prevail in those who have little regard to moral obligation:—After the battle of Culloden, in the year 1745, a reward of thirty thousand pounds was offered to any one who should discover or deliver up the young Pretender. He had taken refuge with the Kennedies, two common thieves, who protected him with the greatest fidelity, robbed for his support, and often went in disguise to Inverness to purchase provisions for him. A considerable ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... the meantime he had done his utmost (which was not much) to cause William to be assassinated, and to regain his lost dominions. James's son was declared, by the French King, the rightful King of England; and was called in France THE CHEVALIER SAINT GEORGE, and in England THE PRETENDER. Some infatuated people in England, and particularly in Scotland, took up the Pretender's cause from time to time—as if the country had not had Stuarts enough!—and many lives were sacrificed, and much misery was occasioned. King ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... The primary cause of the war, then raging, was the acceptance by Louis of the crown of Spain for his grandson Philip despite a previous formal renunciation. But the immediate occasion was his espousal of the cause of the son of James II as pretender to the British throne, which enabled the English Government to form a great European alliance to wrest Spain from Philip and prevent Louis from becoming the absolute master ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport

... husband's brain. At any rate, within three or four months of her death, he committed suicide. But before he did so, he formally executed a rather elaborate will, by which he left all his estates in England, 'now unjustly withheld from me contrary to the law and natural right by the rebel pretender Cromwell, together with the treasure hidden thereon or elsewhere by my late murdered father, Sir James de la Molle,' to John Geoffrey Dofferleigh, his cousin, and the brother of his late wife, and his heirs for ever, on condition only of his ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... sword, Spoons, liquors, and furniture went by the board; He saw—at a distance, the rebels appear, And "rode to the front," which was strangely the rear; He conquered—truth, decency, honor full soon, Pest, pilferer, puppy, pretender, poltroon; And was fain from the scene of his triumphs to slope. Sure there never was ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... Elizabeth's heart leaped. Perhaps this was a hint that instead of two Gordons in the Third class there would be one in the Junior Fourth. "Charles Stuart MacAllister" was the next name. Miss Hillary smiled again. "Are you the Pretender?" she asked, and the Senior Fourth all laughed at ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... Jacobite times, concerning the adventures of Hilary Leigh, a young naval officer on board the Kestrel, in the preventive service off the coast of Sussex. Leigh is taken prisoner by the adherents of the Pretender, amongst whom is an early friend and patron, who desires to spare his life, but will not release him. The narrative is full of exciting and ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... what a snob you have become. Except that he's poor, Dory Hargrave has the advantage of any man we know. He's got more in his head any minute than you or your kind in your whole lives. And he is honorable and a gentleman—a real gentleman, not a pretender. You aren't big enough to understand him; but, at least, you know that if it weren't for your prospects from father, you wouldn't be in the same class with him. He is somebody in himself. But you—and—and your kind—what do ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... impression on them. They were old enough to be young patriots interested in their nation. Their sympathies would be with those trying to free their people from Roman power. Perhaps their thoughts concerning Messiah became confused by the false claims of Judas, the pretender, ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed

... as a "depraved quack," and says that the time he spent with him was worse than wasted. If Saint-Simon was the rogue and pretender that Comte avers, it is no certificate of Comte's insight that it took him four years ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... Let him be the Comte de la Seine; one who has come here under false pretences, a pretender. Whoever he is, he is my enemy, fate has placed him in my hands, and he shall die—ay, if it costs me a war with France. But mark me well—he dies as the thief who under the mask of a French nobleman entered my palace to plunder. The world shall see in this matter only the just punishment ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn

... attaining creativity through the frank expression of his Semitic characteristics, we might presume that no choice existed for Mahler, and that it is inevitable that the Jew, whenever he essays the grand style, becomes just what Wagner called him in his brilliant and brutal pamphlet, a pretender. But, fortunately, such an example does exist. Geneva, "la ville Protestante," that saw unclose the art of Ernest Bloch, was, after all, not much more eager to welcome a Jewish renaissance than was the Vienna of Gustav Mahler. ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... into Buckingham Palace, there was in London another young man, with a "mania for Palace-breaking," of a somewhat different sort. He, too, was "without visible means of support," but nobody called him a vagabond, or a burglar, but only an adventurer, or a "pretender." He had his eye particularly on Royal Windsor, and once a cruel hoax was played off upon him, in the shape of a forged invitation to one of the Queen's grand entertainments at the Castle. He got himself up in Court costume, ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood

... his Royal family, even the zealots of hereditary right, in him, saw something to flatter their favourite prejudices; and to justify a transfer of their attachments, without a change in their principles. The person and cause of the Pretender were become contemptible; his title disowned throughout Europe, his party disbanded in England. His Majesty came indeed to the inheritance of a mighty war; but, victorious in every part of the globe, peace was always in his power, not ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... pleasanter to turn to Biddy and to Joe, whose great forbearance shone more brightly than before, if that could be, contrasted with this brazen pretender. I went towards them slowly, for my limbs were weak, but with a sense of increasing relief as I drew nearer to them, and a sense of leaving arrogance and untruthfulness further ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... mixture of sentimental toryism with practical democracy. A romantic glamour was thrown over the fortunes of the exiled Stuarts, and to have been "out" in '45 with the Young Pretender was a popular thing in parts of Scotland. To this purely poetic loyalty may be attributed such Jacobite ballads of Burns as Over the Water to Charlie. But his sober convictions were on the side of liberty and human brotherhood, and are expressed in the Twa Dogs, the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... the diabolical eye of a fiend she detected the woman who was wearing the dry-cleaned cast-off clothing of her sister in the city. What she saw the office knew, though she kept her conclusions out of the paper if they would do any harm or hurt anyone's feelings. No pretender ever dreamed that she was not fooling Miss Larrabee. She was willing to agree most sympathetically with Mrs. Conklin, who insisted that the "common people" wouldn't be interested in the list of names ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... equal —was not original with Mr. Jefferson. I recollect seeing a pamphlet called the Principles of the Whigs and Jacobites, published about the year 1745, when the last of the Stuarts, called 'the Pretender,' was striking a blow that was fatal to himself, but a blow for his crown, in which pamphlet the very phraseology is used, word for word and letter for letter. I have not got it here to-night. I sent the other day to the Library to try ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... Chancellor(9) sets out to-morrow for Ireland: I never saw him. He carries over one Trapp(10) a parson as his chaplain, a sort of pretender to wit, a second-rate pamphleteer for the cause, whom they pay by sending him to Ireland. I never saw Trapp neither. I met Tighe(11) and your Smyth of Lovet's yesterday by the Exchange. Tighe and I took no notice of each other; ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... punish on account of religion. 6. For-swear', to swear falsely. 9. De-spite'ful-ly, maliciously, cruelly. 10. Pub'li-cans, tax collectors (they were often oppressive and were hated by the Jews). 11. Mete, to measure. Mote, a small particle. 12. Hyp'o-crite, a false pretender. 17. Scribes, men among the Jews who read and explained the law ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... but the Pallantids, though they had been mad enough before? And one shouted, 'Shall we make room for an upstart, a pretender, who comes from we know not where?' And another, 'If he be one, we are more than one; and the stronger can hold his own.' And one shouted one thing, and one another; for they were hot and wild with wine: but ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley

... very foot of his father's garden-wall. Whether he shouldered a matchlock for the Castle-people and Sir John Hope, or merely looked over from the kale-beds at the victorious fighters for Prince Charley, I cannot learn; it is certain only that before Culloden, and the final discomfiture of the Pretender, he avowed himself a good King's-man, and in many an after-year, over his pipe and his ale, told the story of the battle which surged wrathfully around his father's kale-garden by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... it for the exiled court of James the Second," replied he. "And I shall bring in the King, and Mary of Modena, and the Prince their son, who was afterwards the Pretender." ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... ecclesiastical rule did not oppress Protestant dissenters, though very severe on Catholics, whom it was supposed necessary, here as all over America, to keep under, lest they should rise in favor of James II., or his son the Pretender. ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... unlucky sage was born at Apone, near Padua, in the year 1250. Like his friend Arnold de Villeneuve, he was an eminent physician, and a pretender to the arts of astrology and alchymy. He practised for many years in Paris, and made great wealth by killing and curing, and telling fortunes. In an evil day for him, he returned to his own country, with the reputation of being a magician of the first order. It was universally ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... sacrificing to the blood of Louis XIII.; it was to a selfish ambition he was sacrificing a noble ambition; it was to the right of keeping he sacrificed the right of having. The whole extent of his fault was revealed to him by the simple sight of the pretender. All which passed in the mind of Fouquet was lost upon the persons present. He had five minutes to concentrate his meditations upon this point of the case of conscience; five minutes, that is to say, five ages, during which the two kings and their family scarcely ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... This filled Bohemia's German neighbours with unholy joy and brought the distracted country more and more under Teuton domination, so much so that Frederick Barbarossa thought fit to summon one or other pretender and a bunch of obstreperous Bohemian nobles to appear before him at the Imperial Court at Ratisbon, in order that he might exercise the right he had assumed of settling the affairs of the P[vr]emysl dynasty. By way of a picturesque touch to the proceedings, ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... the most virtuous Jews accused of the crime and executed by the procurator of Judea.[12] Exorcism was a very popular and lucrative profession.[13] Simon Magus the magician (par excellence), the impious pretender to miraculous powers, who 'bewitched the people of Samaria by his sorceries,' is celebrated by Eusebius and succeeding Christian writers as the fruitful ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... help me!" exclaimed James, in despair; "for my own children forsake me!" The Queen had already fled to France, taking with her her infant son, the unfortunate Prince James Edward, whose birth (S490) had caused the revolution. Instead of a kingdom, he inherited nothing but the nickname of "Pretender," which he in turn transmitted to his son.[2] King James ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... it has just plundered, but I have yet to see it cast its fatal spell upon a grown bird. Or, if our romancer says that the black snake was drilled in the art of squirrel-catching by its mother, I shall know he is a pretender. ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... very bad marksmen, and I do not wish that a worthy gentleman like you should return to France wounded. Nor should I like to be obliged myself, to send to your prince his million left here by you, for then it would be said, and with some reason, that I paid the Pretender to enable him to make war against the parliament. Go, then, monsieur, and let it be done ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... to understand and practice psychometry should avoid being duped by an ignorant pretender who professes to develop their psychometric faculties—a pretence which is a ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various

... Zoroastrian faith. They had no reverence for Bel, no belief in the claim of Babylon to confer a title of legitimacy on the sovereign of western Asia. The Babylonian priesthood chafed, the Babylonian people broke into revolt. In October B.C. 521 a pretender appeared who took the name of Nebuchadrezzar II., and reigned for nearly a year. But after two defeats in the field, he was captured in Babylon by Darius and put to death in August 520. Once more, in B.C. 514, another revolt took ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce

... (1748) terminated one of the wars of England with Louis XIV. The renunciation by France of the cause of the Pretender was the most material advantage accruing to England from that treaty. But the ink was hardly dry with which it was written, before England took umbrage at France for efforts to rebuild her navy, which had been seriously reduced ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... in his "Lectures on the English Language," says that the deviser of the locution in question was "some grammatical pretender," and that it is "an awkward neologism, which neither convenience, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... read storiettes in the dailies and weeklies, scores and scores of storiettes, not one of which would compare with his. In his despondency, he concluded that he had no judgment whatever, that he was hypnotized by what he wrote, and that he was a self-deluded pretender. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... third pretender to the Flaming Jewel, Jake Kloon, he was now travelling in a fox's circle toward Drowned Valley — that shaggy wilderness of slime and tamarack and depthless bog which touches the northwest base of Star Peak. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers

... in her illness, for repenting the step! For Mathews —I know my own utter unfitness for such a task. I am no hand at describing costumes, a great requisite in an account of mannered pictures. I have not the slightest acquaintance with pictorial language even. An imitator of me, or rather pretender to be me, in his Rejected Articles, has made me minutely describe the dresses of the poissardes at Calais!—I could as soon resolve Euclid. I have no eye for forms and fashions. I substitute analysis, and get rid of the phenomenon by slurring ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... vulgar soul, or that it is deemed necessary, from an excess of weakness, to support a position of an equivocal nature. A gentleman never derogates from his true position, let him be placed in whatever circumstances he may; and an over-fastidious traveller, or a pretender to great importance in a new country, is the most foolish of all ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... village: that there is no justice of peace in the town; nor any in the neighbourhood, who dares act with vigour: that the country abounds with rioters, who, knowing the place to be void of magistrates, assemble in it, pull down the meeting-houses, defy the king, openly avow the pretender, threaten the inhabitants, and oblige them to keep watch in their own houses: that the trade decays, and will stagnate, if not relieved. To remedy these evils, they beseech his majesty to incorporate the town, and grant such privileges as will enable them to support their trade, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... lazy as himself, to come and be called to the Bar, while they were sitting over their wine and fruit after dinner. They put his oaths of allegiance, and his dreadful official denunciations of the Pope and the Pretender, so gently into his mouth, that he hardly knew how the words got there. They wheeled all their chairs softly round from the table, and sat surveying the young barristers with their backs to their bottles, rather than stand up, ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... I shall have a perfectly horrid time. Not only shall I be wincing under the degrading knowledge that I'm a base pretender, but I shall be wretchedly homesick and bored within an inch of my life. I shall be, in the sort of environment Ellaline describes, like a mouse in a vacuum—a poor, frisky, happy, out-of-doors field-mouse, caught for an experiment. ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... scarcely seemed to hear me, so completely was his mind absorbed in the subject on which he was meditating. At length, suddenly recovering from his abstraction, he said, "Bourrienne, do you think that the pretender to the crown of France would renounce his claims if I were to offer him a good indemnity, or even a province in Italy?" Surprised at this abrupt question on a subject which I was far from thinking of, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... question which a man can only answer when he has been specially crammed for examination and his knowledge has not begun to ooze out; while the abnormal incapacity of our rulers was displayed at the attack upon Carthagena or during the Pretender's march into England. The history becomes a shifting chaos marked by no definite policy, and the ship of State is being steered at random as one or other of the competitors for rule manages to grasp the helm for a moment. Then ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... criticism has, in our country, so little permanent effect on the reputation of eminent men. During four years before coming abroad I had read, in leading Republican journals of New York and New Haven, denunciations of Governor Thomas Hart Seymour as an ignoramus, a pretender, a blatant demagogue, a sot and companion of sots, an associate, and fit associate, for the most worthless of the populace. I had now found him a man of real convictions, thoroughly a gentleman, quiet, conscientious, kindly, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... tempered by epigrams, and so become tolerable, but it is important that the epigrams should not be made by the despot. Outside the charmed circle of his friendships, Pope was ready enough to use his wit against any pretender. ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh

... situation. That contingency, however, was remote. It was extremely unlikely that each should have a brother who had been convicted of evil deeds in the revolution, considering how short a time the disturbance had lasted. The theory that the man was a disappointed pretender to her hand was infinitely more probable. In any case, Greifenstein made up his mind that a person existed whose return Clara feared, and the prospect of whose appearance was so painful as ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... that Lord Curzon's description of Persian untruthfulness may be illustrated by the career of the Great Pretender. The Ezelites must, of course, share the blame with their leader, and not the least of their disgraceful misstatements is the assertion that the Bāb assigned the name Baha-'ullah to the younger of the two half-brothers, and that Ezel had also the ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne

... an indefinite mystic way either to intimidate or convince him ... but, . . and he smiled a little.. in any case it only rested with himself to unmask this graceful pretender to angelic honors! And while he thought thus, her soft tones trembled on the silence again, ... he listened as a dreaming mariner might listen to the fancied singing ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... into prison for treason. Deprived of his dignities and banished for life. Calls Pope as a witness to his innocence. Goes to Paris, and becomes Prime Minister of King James. Retires from the court of the ex-King. Death of his daughter. Induced by the Pretender to return to Paris. His defence of the charge of having garbled Clarendon's History of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... us believe, divorced Catharine of Aragon because he desired to have sons, as one way to avoid the breaking out of a civil war; and yet it was a sure way to bring Charles V. into an English dispute for the regal succession, as the supporter of any pretender, to repudiate the aunt of that powerful imperial and royal personage. The English nation, Mr. Froude truly tells us, was at that time "sincerely attached to Spain. The alliance with the House of Burgundy" (of which Charles ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... that way about him, completely under his influence, that I married him. And in a week," here she arose, the cloak falling from her shoulders as she flung out her arms in a gesture of despair, "I knew just what I had done. The man was a cheap pretender; he'd never had an honest thought in his life; he had familiarized himself with all my little weaknesses and aspirations before he met me; all his learning was a sham; his good nature ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... a precarious position. After showing himself so weak in the face of the long and ruthless British provocations, he has to play the strong man with Germany. Otherwise he will lose what prestige he has left, and he knows that in the background the pretender to the throne, Mr. Roosevelt, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... knows so well how to govern himself"; and when assaulted by hired assassins, he manifests courage and coolness, killing one of the bravos with his own hand. It is unnecessary to review the various stages in the Pretender's travels, which are related with a great air of mystery, but amount to nothing. The upshot is that the Prince has not renounced all thoughts of filling the throne of his ancestors, but has ends in view which the world knows nothing of and which will surprise them all some day. Had the Prince ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... rebellion, coming just as it did when the air was thick with rumours of another rising, troubled him greatly; and there was the fact that the boy had, unknown to him, been learning fencing; and lastly this interference, which had enabled a notorious emissary of the Pretender to ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... goodly following and these quickly surrounded him and Bu-lot, but there were many knives against them and now Ja-don pressed forward through those who confronted the pretender. ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the faded blouses, the big sabots. At the end of an hour's drive (they assure you at Blois that even with two horses you will spend double that time), I passed through a sort of gap in a wall which does duty as the gateway of the domain of a proscribed pretender. I followed a straight avenue through a disfeatured park—the park of Chambord has twenty-one miles of circumference; a very sandy, scrubby, melancholy plantation, in which the timber must have been cut many times over and is to-day a mere tangle of brushwood. Here, as in so many spots ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... Princess, and the neglect under which he found her, encouraged his presumption to make his addresses to her, not covertly; and she, though believed not to have transgressed her duty, did receive them too indiscreetly. The old Elector flamed at the insolence of so stigmatized a pretender, and ordered him to quit his dominions the next day. The Princess, surrounded by women too closely connected with her husband, and consequently enemies of the lady they injured, was persuaded by them to suffer the count to kiss her hand before his abrupt departure and he ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... this Mephibosheth, being a grandson of Saul, was at any time a possible pretender to the throne. It was the custom of kings to get rid of such. Not so David. When he finds out about the poor cripple over there across the mountains east of the Jordan, he sends for him and invites him to come and live at the palace ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... as "falsifier," "upstart," "pretender," were freely used, and poor Newton for a time was almost ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... Schiller, finished February 18, 1804, in the author's forty-fifth year and something over a year before his death. After this he completed only a pageant, The Homage of the Arts, although he was occupied with many plans for other plays, including Demetrius, founded on the career of the Russian pretender of this name, of which he left the first act. William Tell is the last of Schiller's five great dramas, a series beginning with Wallenstein, written within nine years, constituting, along with his ballads and many other poems, the work of what is ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... deny,[33] was the Daughter of the late Sir David Murray, Baronet, and Sister of the present Sir David Murray, who is now in the Service of the King of France, in the East Indies: This young Gentleman was unfortunate enough to take Part with the young Pretender in the late Rebellion, being Nephew to Mr. Murray, of Broughton, the Pretender's then Secretary: and after the Battle of Culloden was taken Prisoner, and tried at Carlisle, where he received Sentence of Death as a Rebel: but for his Youth, not being then above eighteen ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead

... These suburban villages have their mosques and religious establishments. They have besides a separate Governor from that of the town, and their inhabitants exercise great political influence during a revolution. In the last, these people supported one Bashaw, or pretender against the other, or that of the city. The Masheeah is two-thirds of a mile from the gates of Tripoli. The houses and gardens being situate mostly on the east and southeastern suburbs of ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... and soul, in his pursuits of sowing, planting, and gathering, Van Baerle, caressed by the whole fraternity of tulip-growers in Europe, entertained nor the least suspicion that there was at his very door a pretender whose throne ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... the throne of all Affghanistan; and a king of that compass was indispensable to Lord Auckland's object. But Dost Mahommed never had even the shadow of an attorney's fiction upon which he could stand as pretender to any throne but that of Cabool, where, by accident, he had just nine points of the law in his favour. How then could we have supported him? "Because thou art virtuous," we must have said, are we to support future usurpation? Because the Dost is just to pedlars, "shall there be no more ale ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... kindred matters with persons who avowed their deficiencies in that sphere of knowledge, yet were willing to learn; relieved from the fear of criticism, he expanded, he glowed, he dogmatized. With Mrs. Lessingham he could not be entirely at his ease; her eye was occasionally disturbing to a pretender who did not lack discernment. But in walking about the museum with Mr. Bradshaw, he was the most brilliant of ciceroni. Jacob was not wholly credulous, for he had spoken of the young man with Mrs. Lessingham, but he found such companionship entertaining ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... And joys in store—that thy elastic mind Might long have gladden'd life's monotony. Thine was a princely heart, a joyous soul, The charm of reason, and the sprightly wit Which kept dull letter'd ignorance in awe, Shook the pretender on his tinsel throne, And claim'd ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... No man cared to encounter the Rajah Laut, and Lakamba, with momentary resignation, subsided into a half-cultivator, half-trader, and nursed in his fortified house his wrath and his ambition, keeping it for use on a more propitious occasion. Still faithful to his character of a prince-pretender, he would not recognize the constituted authorities, answering sulkily the Rajah's messenger, who claimed the tribute for the cultivated fields, that the Rajah had better come and take it himself. By Lingard's advice he was left alone, notwithstanding his rebellious mood; ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... A very different corps was the 78th, or 'Fraser's,' Highlanders, one of the regiments Wolfe first recommended and Pitt first raised. Only fourteen years before the Quebec campaign these same Highlanders had joined Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender, in the famous ''45.' They were mostly Roman Catholics, which accounts for the way they intermarried with the French Canadians after the conquest. They had been fighting for the Stuarts against King George, and Wolfe, ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood

... days, has been called out of his grave. People now are waked up; many believe the reports; thousands are flocking from place to place to hear this man and to see his miracles. In this case who would be most likely to place themselves very near to this pretender? Who would one expect to find near his person? Answer, some of the Trinitarians; chosen ones too; men of sound judgment, and who could be depended on as able to detect any fraud. How long is it reasonable to suppose these pretensions ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou

... Studies, p. 236. Prexaspes says that "if the dead rise again" Smerdis maybe the son of Cyrus. He may mean that this is not probable. Smerdis, he would in that case say, is certainly dead, and this pretender can be the son of Cyrus only in case the dead ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... that war. The powers of Europe awed by our victories, and lying in ruins upon every side of us. Burdened indeed we are with debt, but abounding with resources. We have a trade, not perhaps equal to our wishes, but more than ever we possessed. In effect, no pretender to the crown; nor nutriment for such desperate and destructive factions as have formerly shaken ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... his kingdom, the Jacobites in the North of England and in Scotland began to make a stir, and invited James Stuart over to try to gain the kingdom. The Jacobites used to call him James III., but the Whigs called him the Pretender; and the Tories used, by way of a middle course, to call him the Chevalier—the French word for a knight, as that he certainly was, whether he were king or pretender. A white rose was the Jacobite mark, and the Whigs still held to the orange lily and orange ribbon, for ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge

... should break out in Media, not under the leadership of Phraortes, lest she herself should perish, having been already suspected of complicity with him. But a man could be found—some tool of her powerful agent, who could be readily induced to set himself up as a pretender to the principality of the province, and he could easily be crushed at a later period by Phraortes, who would naturally furnish the money and supplies ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... In 1420 he signed the treaty of Troyes, which recognized Henry V. as the legitimate successor of Charles VI.; in 1423 he gave his sister Anne in marriage to John, duke of Bedford; and during the following years the Burgundian troops supported the English pretender. But a dispute between him and the English concerning the succession in Hainaut, their refusal to permit the town of Orleans to place itself under his rule, and the defeats sustained by them, all combined to embroil him with his allies, and in 1435 he concluded ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... does appear as a compensation for the misery of her domestic life that she was accorded a position in the world gratifying to her nature to hold. Fate certainly owed the woman destined to live for a few years only, but those years long ones, the wife of that Stuart known as the Pretender, many years in which she could be mistress of herself and the recipient of kindly consideration, if not some measure of posthumous fame. The book gives us pictures not only of the countess, but of many persons of more or less renown with whom she was associated. We are introduced to a somewhat ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... expert deception of the senses by the tricks of a conjurer, SO-CALLED hocus-pocus and fraud, and a magician is either an evil-minded, superstitious mortal, fool enough to believe in charms, or an expert pretender and imposter of the first water, who cheats and deceives the people. A mason is the honorable designation of a builder, who works in stone; metaphysically, a member of a semi- secret society, whose sole advantage is social intercourse and ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... really- see no reason to think we shall have another rebellion this fortnight. The most comfortable event to me is, that we shall have no civil war all the summer at Brentford. I dreaded two kings there; but the writ for Middlesex will not be issued till the Parliament meets; so there will be no pretender against King Glynn.(1037) As I love peace, and have done with politics, I quietly acknowledge the King de facto; and hope to pass and repass unmolested through his ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... Nazaire that Prince Charles, the young Pretender, sailed on the adventurous expedition of '45, furnished with a frigate and a ship of the line by Mr. Walsh, of Nantes. Among the noble cavaliers who had sacrificed everything to follow the Stuarts into exile was the Walsh family, originally from Ireland. They had shared the wandering ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser

... and prized while the literature of ancient Greece is studied in any part of the world. This reply proved, not only that the letters ascribed to Phalaris were spurious, but that Atterbury, with all his wit, his eloquence, his skill in controversial fence, was the most audacious pretender that ever wrote about what he did not understand. But to Atterbury this exposure was matter of indifference. He was now engaged in a dispute about matters far more important and exciting than the laws of Zaleucus and ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the margrave, with a satisfied air. "Then I think we may hope to thwart this insolent pretender, who considers me incapable of directing the ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... from Meran. The parqueted floors are partly concealed by the skins of tigers and polar bears, shot in the Arctic regions and in India by her brother, Dom Miguel, Duke of Braganza, the legitimist pretender to the throne of Portugal, while on easels, and suspended from the walls, are oil-color portraits by the archduchess of Baroness C. Kolmossy, to whom she is indebted for her knowledge of painting, of her husband, the late Archduke Charles-Louis, and of ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... cannot be two Gods—two real Gods—president over the actions of men. That were unthinkable. Of two claimants to that sceptre, one must be a pretender, an Anti-Christ. ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... HEREDITARY, as 1. He who voteth on one side because his father always voted on the same. 2. Because the "Wrong-heads" and the like had always sat for the county. 3. Because he hath kindred with an ancient political hero, such as Jack Cade, Hampden, the Pretender, &c., and so must maintain his principle. 4. Because his mother quartereth the Arms of the candidate, and the like. 2nd. He whose principles are CONVENTIONAL, as 1. He who voteth because the candidate keepeth a pack of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various

... Philip's offer must of necessity be accepted, though Alexius III was on friendly terms with the Pope and had been expected to assist the Crusade. To palliate the flagrant treachery a promise was exacted from the pretender that, when installed as Emperor, he would help in the conquest of Egypt with men, ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... with his dark hair blown backward in the wind, he might have been a cavalier fresh from the service of his lady or his king, or riding carelessly to his death for the sake of the drunken young Pretender. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... ceremonies from those entertained at Rome, did not seem to him at all incompatible with the precepts of Jesus. Hanging, drowning, burning and butchering heretics were the legitimate deductions of his theology. He was no casuist nor pretender to holiness: but in those days every man was devout, and Alexander looked with honest horror upon the impiety of the heretics, whom he persecuted and massacred. He attended mass regularly—in the winter mornings by torch-light—and would as soon have foregone ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... sternly, and had curbed their power. There were men like Basil Shuiski who knew too much—greedy, ambitious men, who might turn their knowledge to evil account. The moment might be propitious to the pretender, however false his claim. Therefore Boris dispatched a messenger to Wisniowiecki with the offer of a heavy bribe if he would yield up the person ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... hundred pounds. That man in drab trousers, coming crying down the stops, is a dun: Lord Loughcorrib has ruined him, and won't see him: that is his lordship peeping through the blind of his study at him now. Go thy ways, Loughcorrib, thou art a Snob, a heartless pretender, a hypocrite of hospitality; a rogue who passes forged notes upon society;—but ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... account of his humble origin, as a "revolutionary". He exterminated every member of the Liu family, that is to say the old shan-yue family, of whom he could get hold, in order to remove any possible pretender to the throne; but he could not count on the loyalty of the Hun and other Turkish tribes under his rule. During this period not a few Huns went over to the small realm of the Toba; other Hun tribes withdrew entirely from the political scene and lived with their herds ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... Pretender, he held that however long delayed, the end was bound to restore to him his own; and he had not far to look for what justified the fallacy. In 1881, for instance, as one among many illustrations, an English general at Standerton formally assured ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... generally classified as Christians. But they protest, you know. Protesto, protestare, verb, active, first conjugation. 'Mi pare che la donna protesta troppo,' as the poet sings. They're Christians, but they protest against the Pope and the Pretender." ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... said I, 'the prince of all conspirators and machinators; he made sure of placing the Pretender on the throne of these realms. "I can bring into the field so many men," said he; "my son-in-law, Cluny, so many, and likewise my cousin, and my good friend;" then speaking of those on whom the government reckoned for support he would ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... their puns; A desperate bulwark, sturdy, firm, and fierce, Against the Gothic sons of frozen verse: How changed from him who made the boxes groan, And shook the stage with thunders all his own! Stood up to dash each vain pretender's hope, Maul the French tyrant, or pull down the Pope! If there's a Briton then, true bred and born, Who holds dragoons and wooden shoes in scorn; 20 If there's a critic of distinguished rage; If there's a senior who contemns this age: ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... instances which I need not recall just now you have not done as you agreed. You are not the learned scientist you represented yourself to be — instead, if we are to believe our newly made friends here, you are a pretender, a big sham, and a brute in the bargain. This being so, we intend to dispense with your services from this day forth. We will pay you what is coming to you, give you your share of our outfit, and then you can go your way and we will go ours. We absolutely want ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield

... rival Popes in the Papal schism. The council opened by unanimous consent that Bernard's judgement should decide their views; and without hesitation he pronounced Innocent II. the lawful Pope, and Peter Leonis, or Anacletus II., a vain pretender. He bore the same testimony, in the presence of Innocent, before Henry I. of England, at Chartres, and before Lotharius, the German Emperor, at Liege. The Pope visited Clairvaux, where he was moved to tears at the sight of the tattered flock of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various



Words linked to "Pretender" :   slicker, pseud, smoothy, cheater, trickster, smoothie, sham, phony, Tartuffe, faker, impostor, pretend, name dropper, ringer, charmer, imposter, deceiver, sweet talker, claimant, phoney, beguiler, cheat, pseudo, shammer, Tartufe



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