Johnnie had as yet seen nothing more pretentious than the starched and ruffled flummeries of a small mountain watering-place.

Across the ravine from it, reached by a wooden bridge, stood a pretentious frame edifice, a boarding-house built by the Gloriana mill for the use of its office force and mechanics.

The outside was of an extent to seem fairly pretentious; yet so mean was the construction, so sparing of window and finish, that the building showed itself instantly for what it wasthe cheap boarding-house of a mill town.

The Diet of Frankfort was pretentious, but practically impotent, and was the laughingstock of Europe.

His free-and-easy but haughty manners were a great contrast to those of his stiff, buttoned-up, and pretentious predecessors; and he became a great favorite in Russian court circles.

The meeting was a sort of carnival of peace, hollow and pretentious, with fêtes and banquets and military displays innumerable.

What is simple, natural, appealing to the heart rather than to the head, may last when more pretentious poetry shall have passed away.

He did not sympathize with any religion of denials, but felt that out of the jargon of false and pretentious philosophies would come at last a positive belief which would once more enthrone God in the world.

The principal room in the more pretentious Philippine houses.

Adj. ostentatious, showy, dashing, pretentious; janty^, jaunty; grand, pompous, palatial; high-sounding; turgid &c (big-sounding) 577; gairish^, garish; gaudy, gaudy as a peacock, gaudy as a butterfly, gaudy as a tulip; flaunting, flashing, flaming, glittering; gay &c (ornate)

[Fr.], faire claquer son fouet [Fr.], take merit to oneself, make a merit of, sing Io triumphe^, holloa before one is out of the wood^. Adj. boasting &c v.; magniloquent, flaming, Thrasonic, stilted, gasconading, braggart, boastful, pretentious, soi-disant

[Lat.]; not the thing, out of the question, not to be thought of; preposterous, pretentious, would-be.

And, however pretentious the poem may be, it undoubtedly does make a passionate effort to develop the significance which Milton had achieved; chiefly to enlarge the scope of this significance.

Native beauty and grace attract the princely heart; and while the king's son pays no heed to her pretentious sisters, he is all grace and condescension to little Cinderella.

The more fortunate ones also had in the wagons certain material to be used in building the little hut, which was to be their home until they could earn enough to build a more pretentious residence.

Thus all the mass of foliage rose like a mound of gentle slope toward the centre of the town, where Jack saw vaguely the outlines of a rambling bungalow, more spacious if no more pretentious than its neighbors in its architecture.

Our contemporary economics is, however, still a foolish, pretentious pseudo-science, a festering mass of assumptions about buying and selling and wages-paying, and one would as soon consult Bradshaw or the works of Dumas as our orthodox professors of economics for any light upon this fundamental matter.

It had seemed to pass through a grape arbour that all but shielded from the street a house slightly more pretentious than its neighbours.

It is in truth only a pretentious form of being without settled opinions of our own, and without any desire to settle them.

Our next play is a worse one, but much more pretentious.

The room was lined with bookshelves, and conspicuous therein were a long row of foolish pretentious volumes, the "works" of Lagunethe witless, meandering imitation of philosophy that occupied his life.

Judge Bramber was to him simply pretentious, and a Secretary of State no better than any other man.

Whether it appeal to one not, no critic worth attention any longer disparages it as mere ornate and perfumed verbiage, the elaborate mannerism of a writer hiding the poverty of his thought beneath a pretentious raiment of decorated expression.

But the accent of his voice struck me, the son of Gottfried Gottfried, the dweller in the enclosure of the Red Tower, as painfully hollow and pretentious.

Place Hugo, Mercié, Bonnat, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, Joncières in the presence of simple countrymenor, what is worse still, of inferior artists and critics, of pretentious amateursand you will see by what supercilious, incredulous gestures, being incapable of argument, this satisfied ignorance will repel all assertions of the great authorities.

But I, careless of the occult signs by which the gods forewarn mortals, picked it up, replaced it on my head, and, as if nothing portentous had happened, I passed out from my abode.

To him the place had grown portentous.

It is a net spun out of the raw stuff of fire and blood and of portentous sunsets; and its tendrils have curled around what little honor I ever boasted, and they hold it fast, Patricia.

"Brother," quoth he, selecting an arrow with portentous care, "'tis an ill thing to be cursed with eyes such as mine, I tell thee!" "Aye, and wherefore, Giles?" said Beltane, yet intent on his own thoughts.

Thus omen (a prophetic utterance or sign) and portent (a stretching forward, a foreseeing, a foretelling) might originally be either benign or baleful; but nowadays, especially in the adjectival forms ominous and portentous, they wear a menacing hue.

But here everything like success for two years disappeared, and a gloomy cloud hung over the land, portentous of disasters and dismay.

Dreadful pecuniary exhaustion caused the English energy to droop; and that critical opening La Pucelle used with a corresponding felicity of audacity and suddenness (that were in themselves portentous) for introducing the wedge of French native resources, for rekindling the national pride, and for planting the Dauphin once more upon his feet.

Mayhall stared, and Bill's left eye closed and opened with lightning quickness in a most portentous wink.

"My men are comin' in fast, and you can hardly realize erer what it means to an old soldier erer not to haveer" And Mayhall's answering wink was portentous.

A strange portentous meteor in art.

" "Say, can you laugh indignant at the schemes Of magic terrors, visionary dreams, Portentous wonders, witching imps of Hell, The nightly goblin, and enchanting spell?" They laugh at all such stories; but on the contrary are most lawyers, divines, physicians, philosophers, Austin, Hemingius, Danaeus, Chytraeus, Zanchius, Aretius, &c. Delrio, Springer, Niderius, lib.

At this moment a stealthy step stole softly behind, and the next second Mr. Mehrman Singh crept quietly and noiselessly beside me, his face flushed with rapid walking, his eye flashing with excitement, his finger on his lip, and a look of portentous gravity and importance striving to spread itself over his speaking countenance.

They seem to be born with the gift of telling a lie with most portentous gravity.

To the first-born, Piero, came the great inheritance of his father's place and power, and no man ever entered into a greater possession,a possession, so firm, so unquestioned and so portentous, that nothing seemed likely to disturb its equilibrium or to sully its triumph.

Then suddenly a portentous crash was heard, as if the mountains were tumbling in ruins.

There were many thunderstorms to start with and portentous winds, but no one could have expected that so many evils would result from them.

We have no reason to regret that these measures have been thus far adopted and pursued, and in proportion as we enlarge our view of the portentous and incalculable situation of Europe we shall discover new and cogent motives for the full development of our energies and resources.

If clouds have lowered above the other hemisphere, they have not cast their portentous shadows upon our happy shores.

A PORTENTOUS SUMMER.

The great leader who had threatened the capital, and scored these portentous victories, had at last to pay for them all in defeat and humiliation on his own soil.

"There are great preparations making for Mr. Tom," said she with a portentous face.

The incident embodies the superstition of sitting in the Druid's Chair, similar in its portentous moment to sitting in St. Michael's Chair, in Cornwall.

The mate, in a rage, at length mounted himself; when resolutely, as in the former case, searching for the bugbear, he soon ascertained the innocent cause of so much terror to be a large horned owl, so lodged as to be out of sight to those who ascended on the other side of the vessel, but which when any one approached the cross-trees, popped up his portentous visage to see what was coming.

but more fateful than the restless deep, Whose crested hosts rise high but fall again, I hear, in solemn and portentous sweep, The slow, deliberate marshalling of men.

And the tremendous skull of the great hog of Oakham hung, a portentous ivory overmantel, with a Chinese jar in either eye socket, snout down above the fire....