pretentiousness

Estimated CEFR level: C2 — Proficiency

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

noun lack of elegance as a consequence of being pompous and puffed up with vanity
noun the quality of being pretentious (behaving or speaking in such a manner as to create a false appearance of great importance or worth)

From pretentious + -ness.

The rooms were just ordinary hotel rooms, furnished with the dingy, wholesale pretentiousness of hotels of the second rate. — Children of the Whirlwind, Leroy Scott
He saw the years, the brilliant winter days and all the long sweet afternoons which were meant for summery meadows, lost in such brittle pretentiousness. — Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
But he wasn’t one of Will’s fine London acquaintances—the poet saw that much at once by the cheap pretentiousness of his coat and hat, the flaring blue of his made-up silk tie, the obtrusive glitter of the false diamond pin which adorned its centre. — Linnet: A Romance, Grant Allen

ostentation, ostentatiousness, pomposity, pompousness, puffiness, splashiness, inflation

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