| Preposterous, | } |
| Preposterously. |
A word nearly or quite unserviceable now, being merely an ungraceful and slipshod synonym for absurd. But restore and confine it to its old use and to one peculiar branch of absurdity, the reversing of the true order and method of things, the putting of the last first, and the first last, and of what excellent service it would be capable!
It is a preposterous order to teach first, and to learn after.—The Translators [of the Bible, 1611] to the Reader.
King Asa justly received little benefit by them [physicians], because of his preposterous addressing himself to them before he went to God (2 Chron. xvi. 12).—Fuller, Worthies of England, c. ix.
To reason thus, I am of the elect, I therefore have saving faith, and the rest of the sanctifying qualities, therefore that which I do is good: thus I say to reason is very preposterous. We must go a quite contrary course, and thus reason: my life is good ... I therefore have the gifts of sanctification, and therefore am of God’s elect.—Hales, Sermon on St. Peter’s Fall.
Some indeed preposterously misplace these, and make us partake of the benefit of Christ’s priestly office in the forgiveness of our sins and our reconcilement to God, before we are brought under the sceptre of his kingly office by our obedience.—South, Sermons, 1744, vol. xi. p. 3.
| Pretend, | } |
| Pretence, | |
| Pretension. |
To charge one with ‘pretending’ anything is now a much more serious charge than it was once. Indeed it was not necessarily, and only by accident, a charge at all. That was ‘pretended’ which one stretched out before himself and in face of others: but whether it was the thing it affirmed itself to be, or, as at present, only a deceitful resemblance of this, the word did not decide. While it was thus with ‘to pretend,’ there was as yet no distinction recognized between ‘pretence’ and ‘pretension;’ they both signified the act of ‘pretending,’ or the thing ‘pretended;’ but whether truly or falsely it was left to the context, or to the judgment of the reader, to decide. ‘Pretence’ has since followed the fortunes of ‘pretend,’ and has fallen with it; while ‘pretension’ has disengaged itself from being a merely useless synonym of ‘pretence,’ and, retaining its relation to the earlier uses of the verb, now signifies a claim put forward which may or may not be valid, the word leaving this for other considerations to determine. Louis Napoleon assumed the dictatorship under the ‘pretence’ of resisting anarchy; the House of Orleans had ‘pretensions’ to the throne of France. But these distinctions are quite modern.
Being preferred by King James to the bishopric of Chichester, and pretending his own imperfectness and insufficiency to undergo such a charge, he caused to be engraven about the seal of his bishopric, those words of St. Paul, Et ad hæc quis idoneus?—Isaacson, Life and Death of Lancelot Andrewes.
[The Sabbath] is rather hominis gratiâ quam Dei; and though God’s honour is mainly pretended in it, yet it is man’s happiness that is really intended by it, even of God Himself.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 13.