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.
Examples of pretexts in a Sentence
As the prospect diminished of her bearing children to Charles, several schemes were set on foot for procuring a divorce on various pretexts.
The quarrels of the church and empire lend pretexts and furnish war-cries; but the real question at issue is not the supremacy of pope or emperor.
Spain, France, Germany, with their Swiss auxiliaries, had been summoned upon various pretexts to partake her provinces.
The abolition of debts was carried into effect, but the land distribution was put off by Agesilaus on various pretexts.
Moreover, a neo-acquisita commissio was constituted to inquire into the title-deeds of the Magyar landowners in the old Turkish provinces, and hundreds of estates were transferred, on the flimsiest of pretexts, to naturalized foreigners.
The king and Later his brother had long entertained designs against the city, history of and for the purpose of crushing them two pretexts were the cor- set up-(I) that a new rate of market tolls had been levied poration.
Pretexts for a Dacian war were not difficult to find.
With this adjustment of existing cases the number of possible pretexts for the employment of force is being rapidly diminished.
They suffered, not only from the regular taxes, which were seldom remitted even after bad seasons, but also from monopolies; and Procopius goes so far as to allege that the emperor made a practice of further recruiting his treasury by confiscating on slight or fictitious pretexts the property of persons who had displeased Theodora or himself.
He held Cumberland (1070), and supported the claims of his brotherin-law, the IEtheling, while his relationship with Gospatric, earl of Northumbria, who retired into Scotland, gave him pretexts for invading the north-east of England.
The demand, though supported by plausible pretexts, was not only unusual but clearly inadmissible.
Mamun resolved to hold out, and found pretexts for remaining in Khorasan.
The most obvious method of rendering the Russian alliance unserviceable to the queen of Hungary was by implicating Russia in hostilities with her ancient rival, Sweden, and this was brought about, by French influence and French money, when in August 1741 the Swedish government, on the most frivolous pretexts, declared war against Russia.
Sulla, after his victory over Mithradates, brushed away their pretexts, and inflicting a very heavy fine told them that the punishment fell far short of their deserts.
But, although the union of the Roses ought to have extinguished controversy, a host of debatable questions and plausible pretexts for rebellion remained.
Reasons or pretexts for declaring forfeitures against O'Cahan were easily found.
Thus the Red and White Roses were united and the pretexts for civil war done away with.
Moreover, under insinuating and crafty pretexts, Henry IV.
It is odd that incidents involving supposedly civil aeroplanes similar to that which the Miami terrorists provoked years later were among the pretexts included.
Behold, he invents pretexts against me; he counts me as his enemy.
Perhaps the truth is that the film's brutal violence and misogynistic attitude are mere pretexts for its condemnation.
To this the pope assented under pressure from Napoleon; but the latter soon found other pretexts for intervention, and in February 1808 a French column under Miollis occupied Rome, and deposed the papal authorities.
His claim to the crown of England is something without earlier precedent, something as far as possible removed from the open violence of aggressors who have no pretexts with which to disguise their aggression.
At the expiration of the period (1893) Chile evaded compliance with the agreement, and under various pretexts retained forcible possession of the territory.
The oppression of the French Protestants was but one of the pretexts for the English expedition under James I.s favorite, the duke of Buckingham, to La Rochelle in 1627; and, in the end, this intervention of a foreign power compromised their cause.
Seeing his gloomy face as he frowned at his wife, the officers grew still merrier, and some of them could not refrain from laughter, for which they hurriedly sought plausible pretexts.
Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself up as a prisoner to escape from all this horror and misery; but on the one hand the force of this common attraction to Smolensk, their goal, drew each of them in the same direction; on the other hand an army corps could not surrender to a company, and though the French availed themselves of every convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to surrender on the slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not always occur.