disapproval If you say that someone or something is pretentious, you mean that they try to seem important or significant, but you do not think that they are. His response was full of pretentious nonsense + pretentiousness pre·ten·tious·ness He has a tendency towards pretentiousness. if someone or something is pretentious, they try to seem more important, intelligent, or high class than they really are in order to be impressive unpretentious
making claim to or creating an appearance of (often undeserved) importance or distinction; "a pretentious country house"; "a pretentious fraud"; "a pretentious scholarly edition"