A fictitious reason that is concocted in order to conceal the real reason

Usage examples of pretext.

Quite unintentionally, he himself had been partly the cause of the murder, but only partly, and when he learned that he had given a pretext to the murderers, he became anguished, stupefied, began imagining things, went quite off his head, and convinced himself that he was the murderer!

In these passages cited above we can see sketched the premises and pretexts of that anthropocentric war.

There are common barrators among doctors as there are among lawyers, --stirrers up of strife under one pretext and another, but in reality because they like it.

Less than ten days earlier, a martinet of a Chief Commissioner, who did not approve of inspectors of the old school, had asked him to resign--to retire early, as he more elegantly put it--on the pretext of some rash act the Superintendent was supposed to have committed.

I thought you adorable, and the remembrance of you took such a hold on me that I longed to see you again, and so I made use of that fool Morin as a pretext, and here I am.

America, but the Parlementaire orator was able to represent it as an imposition that would strike the great and humble alike, festooning tradesmen, booksellers, shopkeepers and guildsmen in reams of paper, and which would furnish yet another pretext for the heavy hand of government to press on the shoulder of defenseless citizens.

The silly pretext of difficulties by which my erasure, notwithstanding the reiterated solicitations of the victorious General, was so long delayed made me apprehensive of a renewal, under a weak and jealous pentarchy, of the horrible scenes of 1796.

Henry Hunt and others, met in Spa-fields on the 10th of February, under the pretext of petitioning for parliamentary reform.

What I do plan to do, incidentally, is slip away under the pretext of being called to a top-level conference on the redeployment of personnel from here and the selection of a substitute base-location, and by the time they finish investigating the circumstances I should have the rope braided to hang Quist by the neck.

Moscow- was suggested to the Emperor, and accepted by him, as a pretext for quitting the army.

Dickmann authorized large-scale ratissages looting of French towns under the pretext of searching for Maquis suspects, but in reality looking for gold.

And the much-vaunted plan of mine for redeveloping the ground below the monorail central was nothing more than a governmental pretext to kick out Sigueiras.

Prince Ferdinand is placed with regard to the Portuguese people, and the great suspicion with which all foreigners he brought here into his service are viewed, renders it necessary that the utmost caution, should be observed by the English residing in Portugal with respect to private interviews either with her most faithful majesty or her august consort, that neither the government nor the people may have a pretext for entertaining any undue impressions of the intentions of England.

Teresa showed to him that she was a worthy daughter of Eve, and he returned to the forest, pausing several times on his way, under the pretext of saluting his protectors.

Miller got ahold of some videotape of Jennie signing on some pretext and then analyzed it.