making claim to or creating an appearance of (often undeserved) importance or distinction; "a pretentious country house"; "a pretentious fraud"; "a pretentious scholarly edition"
the faculty of contriving; inventive skill; "his skillful contrivance of answers to every problem"
an artificial or unnatural or obviously contrived arrangement of details or parts etc.; "the plot contained too many improbable contrivances to be believable"
an elaborate or deceitful scheme contrived to deceive or evade; "his testimony was just a contrivance to throw us off the track"