pretext

Jin Yong-sung, chairman of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, also ordered the military to "respond with firm resolve" should North Korea use Seoul's actions as a pretext for aggressive action.

From Barron's ● Oct. 21, 2026

The audit found that gang units citywide routinely flouted the department’s rules on pretext stops, including by often failing to obtain proper consent to search vehicles.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 1, 2026

The parties “worked in tandem and were never actually adverse,” she wrote, calling the lawsuit a pretext for a settlement “that had no viable basis in law or fact.”

From Slate ● Aug. 10, 2026

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

"He was intelligent, spellbinding. I knew in my bones that here was an opportunity to do some work. I needed only some kind of pretext to make contact with him."

From "Spies: The Secret Showdown Between America and Russia" by Marc Favreau

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

Actions over the Fed building were "pretexts", he said.

From BBC ● Jan. 12, 2026

He dismissed the possible threat of 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 T. H. S. (Thomas Hay Sweet) Escott