noun
definition
A false, contrived, or assumed purpose or reason; a pretense.
example
The reporter called the company on the pretext of trying to resolve a consumer complaint.
verb
definition
To employ a pretext, which involves using a false or contrived purpose for soliciting the gain of something else.
example
The spy obtained his phone records using possibly-illegal pretexting methods.
Examples of pretext in a Sentence
But they served as a sufficient pretext, and in.
To prevent this interference, or rather to give no pretext for it, was his guiding thought as to foreign policy.
On the contrary it served as a pretext for Ivan to interfere in Lithuanian affairs.
The duke went to England in 1360 as a hostage for the fulfilment of the treaty of Bretigny, returning to France in 1367 on the pretext of collecting his ransom.
These acquisitions were made between 1328 and 1338; in the latter year Orkhan achieved his first conquest from Mussulman hands by the capture of Karassi, the pretext being the quarrel for the succession on the death of the prince, Ajlan Bey.
Thus the Magyars were saddled with two rival kings with equally valid titles, which proved an even worse disaster than the Mohacs catastrophe; for in most of the counties of the unhappy kingdom desperadoes of every description plundered the estates of the gentry, and oppressed the common people, under the pretext that they were fighting the battles of the contending monarchs.
Of metaphysics proper Voltaire neither then nor at any other time understood anything, and the subject, like every other, merely served him as a pretext for laughing at religion with the usual reservation of a tolerably affirmative deism.
He must have found some pretext for giving her an injection.
There was no doubt a plausible pretext for both proposals.
The day after the council at Malo-Yaroslavets Napoleon rode out early in the morning amid the lines of his army with his suite of marshals and an escort, on the pretext of inspecting the army and the scene of the previous and of the impending battle.
When she wanted to be agitated, Nicholas and his health would be the pretext, and when she felt a need to speak spitefully, the pretext would be Countess Mary.
The English invasions of 1547, undertaken with a view to enforcing the English marriage, gave Mary the desired pretext for a French alliance.
His courageous intervention in favour of the Girondists on the 2nd of June 1793 served Robespierre as a pretext to prevent his re-election to the Committee of Public Safety.
He also summoned 300 leading citizens on the pretext of wishing to consult them, but fearing treachery they refused to come.
In 1895 the Prussian police used a law of 1850 as a pretext for dissolving the Socialist organization in Berlin, as had been done twenty years before.
In August 1905 disturbances arose owing to an attempt by some merchants to obtain special assistance from the treasury on the pretext of embarrassment caused by Japanese financial reforms; these disturbances spread to some of the provinces, and the Japanese were compelled to make a show of force.
When she needed to cry, the deceased count would be the pretext.
Augustus continued the war against the Turks for a time, and being anxious to extend his influence and to find a pretext for retaining the Saxon troops in Poland, made an alliance in 1699 with Russia and Denmark against Charles XII.
At the synod of the dissident cardinals, assembled at Pisa, views of this type were in the ascendant; and, although protests were not lacking, the necessities of the time served as a pretext for ignoring all objections.
The Gurkhas, however, in 1788 and following years continued to strike coins of progressively debased quality, which were rude imitations of the old Nepalese mintage, and to endeavour to force this currency on the Tibetans, eventually making the departure of the latter from old usage a pretext for war and invasion.
During the minority of the fifth (really the third) Dalai Lama, when the Mongol king Tengir To, under the pretext of supporting the religion, intervened in the affairs of the country, the Pan-ch'en Lo-sang Ch'o-kyi Gyal-ts'ang lama obtained the withdrawal of the invaders by the payment of a heavy war indemnity, and then applied for help to the first Manchu emperor of China, who had just ascended the throne.
This, however, was a mere pretext, it was for his anti-monarchical sentiments that he was really prosecuted.
When he heard of the murder he was panic-stricken; and his expedition to Ireland (1171), although so momentous for the future, was originally a mere pretext for placing himself beyond the reach of Alexander's censures.
These leaders skilfully seized upon every breach of tradition to inflame popular passion, attacking especially the medical work as a pretext for mutilation, the schools as hotbeds of vice, and the orphanages as furnishing material for witchcraft.
It was not until 1448, however, that he found a pretext for attack, and the war which lasted until 1453 ended in a victory for the Nurembergers, and the recognition of their independence.
Under the pretext of seeking a passport, Gerard penetrated into the Prinsenhof at Delft, and firing point blank at William as he left the dining hall, mortally wounded him (loth of July 1584).
The treatment of Robert by the English was put forward by William the Conqueror as a pretext for invading England.
The expedition, however, did not take place, and was but a pretext for levying subsidies and for knightly entertainments.
On the pretext that fair deliberation was impossible in the capital, the assembly was now ordered to meet in Brandenburg, while troops were concentrated near Berlin and a state of siege was proclaimed.
The Chamber was summoned at intervals rather as a pretext for the subsequent employment of paragraph 14 than in the hope of securing its assent to legislative measures.
Beside the other canonical books of the Old Testament, translated in many cases with modifications or additions, it included translations of other Hebrew books (Ecclesiasticus, Judith, &c.), works composed originally in Greek but imitating to some extent the Hebraic style (like Wisdom), works modelled more closely on the Greek literary tradition, either historical, like 2 Maccabees, or philosophical, like the productions of the Alexandrian school, represented for us by Aristobulus and Philo, in which style and thought are almost wholly Greek and the reference to the Old Testament a mere pretext; or Greek poems on Jewish subjects, like the epic of the elder Philo and Ezechiel's tragedy, Exagoge.
The amirs Salr and Bibars having usurped the whole of the sultans authority, he, after some futile attempts to free himself of them, under the pretext of pilgrimage to Mecca, retired in March 1309 to Kerak, whence he sent his abdication to Cairo; in consequence of which, on the 5th of April 1309, Bibars Jashengir was proclaimed sultan, with the title Malik al-Mozajar.
This offered a fair pretext to the Mamelukes to rid themselves of a man proved to be a perfidious tyrant.
He also, on pretext of his disloyalty, put to death Selim, pasha of Delvinon.
Ali's authority in the great part of the peninsula subject to him now overshadowed that of the sultan; and Mahmud II., whose whole policy had been directed to destroying the overgrown power of the provincial pashas, began to seek a pretext for overthrowing the Lion of Iannina,whose all-devouring ambition seemed to threaten his own throne.
Justinian began the war in 535, taking as his pretext the murder of Queen Amalasuntha, daughter of Theodoric, who had placed herself under his protection, and alleging that the Ostrogothic kingdom had always owned a species of allegiance to the emperor at Constantinople.
But the other professors rose in arms, forbade him to enter the mosque, and in 1879 procured his exile on the pretext that he entertained democratic and revolutionary ideas.
The validity of his acts was contested on the pretext that, having been originally bishop of Porto, he could not be a legitimate pope.
The one idea of Kruger and his faction was to oust Burgers from office on any pretext, and, if possible, to put Kruger in his place.
In 168 B.C. Antiochus returned and found that the pretext for his presence there was gone.
His policy, consistently maintained, was to permit no kind of foreign interference, on any pretext, with the interior concerns or the economical conditions of his country.
Religion is always the original pretext of these gatherings or melas, at some of which nothing is done beyond bathing in the river, or performing various superstitious ceremonies.
This is generally known as the Breviarium Alaricianum, or Breviary of Alaric. Alaric was of a peaceful disposition, and endeavoured strictly to maintain the treaty which his father had concluded with the Franks, whose king Clovis, however, desiring to obtain the Gothic province in Gaul, found a pretext for war in the Arianism of Alaric. The intervention of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths and father-in-law of Alaric, proved unavailing.
Alexander henceforth did his best for his country by humbling himself before the Tatars so as to give them no pretext for ravaging the land again.
Having determined to fix the order of succession in so formal a manner as to take away all pretext for future contentions, he executed a deed by which he appointed his eldest son Mahommed his immediate heir, and after him the second, Abdallah, and after Abdallah the third, Qasim.
The Alids seized on the elevation of Mamun as a pretext for fresh revolts.
He at once arrested his march; but the pressure of famine in the capital, caused by the cutting off of supplies from Asia and the presence of the large Russian force, compelled Mahmud to yield, and on the 3rd of May a firman ceded Adana to Ibrahim under the pretext of appointing him muhassil, or collector of the revenue.
To complete the desperateness of the situation the news reached the capital that Ahmed Pasha, the Ottoman admiral-in-chief, had sailed to Alexandria and surrendered his fleet to Mehemet Ali, on the pretext that the sultan's advisers were sold to the Russians.
But all attempts to remove the accused from the civil prison in Saragossa to that of the Inquisition raised popular tumults, which in the end led to Perez's escape across the Pyrenees, but unfortunately also furnished Philip with a pretext for sending an army into Aragon and suppressing the ancient.
Some attention was attracted to this arrangement when in 1906 it was asserted that Russia, under pretext of stopping the smuggling of arms into Finland, was massing considerable naval and military forces at the islands.