From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Pretension \Pre*ten"sion\, noun [Cf. F. pr['e]tention. See {Pretend}, {Tension}.]
1. The act of pretending, or laying claim; the act of asserting right or title.
The arrogant pretensions of Glengarry contributed to protract the discussion. --Macaulay.
2. A claim made, whether true or false; a right alleged or assumed; a holding out the appearance of possessing a certain character; as, pretensions to scholarship.
This was but an invention and pretension given out by the Spaniards. --Bacon.
Men indulge those opinions and practices that favor their pretensions. --L'Estrange.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
noun
1: a false or unsupportable quality [syn: {pretense}, {pretence}]
2: the advancing of a claim; "his pretension to the crown"; "the town still puts forward pretensions as a famous resort"
3: the quality of being pretentious (creating a false appearance of great importance or worth) [syn: {pretentiousness}] [ant: {unpretentiousness}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
175 Moby Thesaurus words for "pretension": Barnumism, acting, affectation, affectedness, airs, airs and graces, alibi, ambitions, ambitiousness, apology, appearance, appurtenance, artificiality, aspiration, attitudinizing, authority, bedizenment, big talk, birthright, blind, bluff, bluffing, charade, cheating, claim, cloak, color, coloring, conjugal right, cover story, cover-up, deception, delusion, demand, device, disguise, dissemblance, dissembling, dissimulation, divine right, droit, due, excuse, facade, face, faculty, fakery, faking, false air, false front, false show, falsity, feigned belief, feigning, feint, flashiness, flatulence, flatulency, four-flushing, fraud, front, fulsomeness, garishness, gaudiness, gilt, gloss, grandiloquence, grandioseness, grandiosity, guise, handle, high-flown diction, humbug, humbuggery, hypocrisy, image, imposture, inalienable right, inflatedness, inflation, insincerity, interest, lame excuse, lexiphanicism, locus standi, loftiness, lofty affectations, luridness, magniloquence, make-believe, mannerism, mask, masquerade, mere rhetoric, mere show, meretriciousness, natural right, orotundity, ostensible motive, ostent, ostentation, ostentatious complexity, ostentatiousness, outward show, pageant, platitudinous ponderosity, playacting, polysyllabic profundity, pomposity, pompous prolixity, pompousness, pontification, poor excuse, pose, posing, posture, power, prerogative, prescription, presumptive right, pretending, pretense, pretensions, pretentiousness, pretext, proper claim, property right, prose run mad, protestation, prunes and prisms, public image, public motive, put-off, put-on, putting on airs, refuge, representation, rhetoric, rhetoricalness, right, screen, seeming, semblance, sensationalism, sententiousness, sham, show, showiness, simulacrum, simulation, smoke screen, speciousness, stalking-horse, stiltedness, stratagem, stylishness, subterfuge, swelling utterance, swollen phrase, swollenness, tall talk, title, tortuosity, tortuousness, trick, tumidity, tumidness, turgescence, turgidity, unnaturalness, varnish, veil, vested interest, vested right, window dressing
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