Pretence

1. a. Alt. of Pretenceless
2. n. The act of laying claim; the claim laid; assumption; pretension.
3. n. The act of holding out, or offering, to others something false or feigned; presentation of what is deceptive or hypocritical; deception by showing what is unreal and concealing what is real; false show; simulation; as, pretense of illness; under pretense of patriotism; on pretense of revenging Caesar’s death.
4. n. That which is pretended; false, deceptive, or hypocritical show, argument, or reason; pretext; feint.

The word meanings were obtained from OPTED(The Online Plain Text English Dictionary), which is based on “The Project Gutenberg Etext of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” which is in turn based on the 1913 US Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (See Project Gutenburg), as a text file.