making claim to or creating an appearance of (often undeserved) importance or distinction; "a pretentious country house"; "a pretentious fraud"; "a pretentious scholarly edition"
practicing great self-denial; "Be systematically ascetic...do...something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it"- William James; "a desert nomad's austere life"; "a spartan diet"; "a spartan existence"
pertaining to or characteristic of an ascetic or the practice of rigorous self-discipline; "ascetic practices"