If a person, a place, or a piece of writing is pretentious, it tries to seem more important, more clever, or more high-class than it really is, so that other people will be impressed. The food is ordinary, but the menu uses French for no good reason. Someone drops big words they do not quite own. A café puts on airs. Though actually, people use this word rather loosely, and sometimes unkindly. One person’s pretentious is another person’s “they just like nice things.” Younger speakers often throw it at anything that feels as if it is trying too hard — a fancy coffee order, a carefully sad photo online. Older, more careful speakers keep it for false importance: not “stylish,” but “putting on a show of being better.” It is a critic’s word, and a gossip’s word. Calling someone pretentious attacks their honesty, not only their taste. It is not a compliment, even as a joke, unless the friendship is very safe. Notice the spelling: pretentious has a t in the middle (pre-TEN-tious). Related words pretense and pretension have an s. That t comes from the French spelling prétentieux. English never grew an ending -sious, so the French t stayed.

裝腔作勢的、自命不凡的、做作的