How to Use pretext in a Sentence
pretext
noun- She went back to her friend's house on the pretext that she had forgotten her purse.
-
Ukraine and the West say this is a baseless pretext for war.
—Fox News, 1 May 2022
-
The rule quickly caused pretext stops by the LAPD to plummet.
—Noah Goldberg, Los Angeles Times, 20 Dec. 2023
-
The play isn’t the thing but simply the pretext for disaster.
—Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times, 14 Aug. 2023
-
Holiday’s drug use is a pretext for both the F.B.I. and Daniels.
—Wesley Morris, New York Times, 12 Oct. 2022
-
The rebels, led by Mr. Kagame, said the Hutu extremists downed the plane as a pretext for genocide.
—Abdi Latif Dahir, New York Times, 7 Apr. 2024
-
On the other hand, the pandemic was little more than a pretext in the first place.
—Samuel Goldman, The Week, 6 Apr. 2022
-
In essence, Pence was being asked to endorse a stack of forgeries and then use them as pretext for a coup.
—Amy Davidson Sorkin, The New Yorker, 13 Aug. 2023
-
Ukraine and its allies call that a false pretext for a war of aggression.
—Reuters, NBC News, 31 May 2022
-
Prosecutors said the teenagers were lured to the same park under the pretext of a gang meeting.
—Salvador Rizzo, Washington Post, 2 July 2022
-
To be clear: Everyone in the world of academia understands this to be a pretext, and a shabby one at that.
—The Editors, National Review, 8 Mar. 2023
-
Such claims could be used as a pretext for escalating the war.
—John Bacon, USA TODAY, 2 Nov. 2022
-
Western leaders dismissed the claims as a false pretext for the attack.
—chicagotribune.com, 24 Mar. 2022
-
His gut tells him that all this talk about the cost of living is simply a pretext for owners to make more money.
—New York Times, 20 Aug. 2022
-
Russia still bans protests on the pretext that mass gatherings are a health hazard.
—Ann M. Simmons, WSJ, 11 Nov. 2023
-
Cyrus believes this was all a pretext for ending the arrangement.
—Charles Bethea, The New Yorker, 13 Feb. 2024
-
The pretext might be different, but the objective would be the same: subduing Ukraine.
—Samuel Charap, Foreign Affairs, 13 July 2023
-
This continued for over a year, after which the scammer asked for $5,000 on the pretext of paying a credit-card bill.
—Bart Ziegler, WSJ, 8 Sep. 2022
-
Leach, without any pretext, told Salisbury to buy a plane ticket to Lubbock and come to a practice.
—Kevin Reynolds, The Salt Lake Tribune, 16 Dec. 2022
-
Finding fault is a pretext. Re: Annoying: What about dads?
—Carolyn Hax, Washington Post, 16 Jan. 2024
-
If Putin was looking for a pretext to cut off countries that have supported Ukraine, this could serve that function.
—CBS News, 27 Apr. 2022
-
In the case of Sandy Hook, Jones aired programming for years that the slaughter of first graders was a hoax contrived as a pretext for gun control and the children and parents were actors.
—Hartford Courant, 20 Sep. 2022
-
The shareholders argue Musk used the bots issue as a pretext for backing out of the deal or renegotiating the sale price.
—Jacob Carpenter, Fortune, 27 May 2022
-
Her killing raised concerns that Russia would use the bombing as a pretext for escalating its six-month war in Ukraine.
—Harold Maass, The Week, 23 Aug. 2022
-
On a superficial level, the book was his pretext for not working and earning money; the woman had to raise the children and earn the money.
—Michael Lapointe, The New Yorker, 26 Apr. 2022
-
Farmers throughout the region worry that their way of life may be on the verge of extinction — as settlers and Israeli forces use the war as a pretext to shut them down.
—Tribune News Service, Hartford Courant, 3 Apr. 2024
-
The official noted that that any transit to the US of Tsai should not be used by China as a pretext for an aggressive response.
—Tara Subramaniam, CNN, 21 Mar. 2023
-
The phony narrative that Liz Cheney is pushing has been the radical left's pretext for their all-out war on free speech.
—Aaron Navarro, CBS News, 16 Aug. 2022
-
The laws of war were invoked following 9/11 for sound reasons, not as a pretext for avoiding the civilian justice system.
—Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 12 Mar. 2022
-
Apollo was a villain in the first Rocky film, a more nuanced antagonist in the second, a best friend and guru in the third, and a pretext for revenge and the expiation of guilt in the fourth.
—Vulture, 4 Feb. 2024
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pretext.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Last Updated: