pretext

The man had been called into the local police station on the pretext of checking his personal data.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026

We still see this in so many cases involving the Fourth Amendment, when police use the alleged smell of marijuana as a pretext for an illegal search.

From Slate ● Jun. 18, 2026

“We’re worried this is a pretext for people to fall out of the asylum system and fall out of the workforce,” she said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 12, 2026

But some industry watchers say firms are using the technology as a pretext for other cost-cutting.

From Barron's ● May 21, 2026

The Spaniards counteracted this threat by inventing a pretext to seize the tlatoani in his own palace, making him first their captive and then their puppet.

From "1491" by Charles C. Mann

No surprise, the panel agreed with him and concocted pretexts to kill the treatment—for instance, the staff opined that maybe biopsies had zapped the tumors.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026

The Syrian foreign ministry denounced the attack as "an outrageous assault on Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity" and called Israel's justification "flimsy pretexts and fabricated excuses".

From BBC ● Mar. 20, 2026

He dismissed the possible threat of a criminal indictment over his testimony or the renovation project as "pretexts."

From Barron's ● Jan. 12, 2026

The pretexts are flimsy; due process is absent, and mistakes have already been made.

From Slate ● Apr. 3, 2025

The great change of recent years in parliamentary methods is of course the organized obstruction on frivolous and irrelevant pretexts raised during debate.

From Social Transformations of the Victorian Age A Survey of Court and Country by Escott, T. H. S. (Thomas Hay Sweet)