pretext

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 FCC has spent the last 18 months searching for some pretext for revoking the stations’ licenses,” Disney’s attorneys wrote in the filing.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 30, 2026

Clement’s lawyer said in a statement that the report found against her “on the pretext of ‘perception,’ the source of which was rumour, gossip and innuendo.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026

We narrowed the search for Jamal with several sources - one of them arranged a call with Jamal under a false pretext and recorded their conversation.

From BBC ● Jul. 2, 2026

The rolls of music that she herself had thrown into the trash with the pretext that they had rotted from dampness kept spinning and playing in her memory.

From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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

He is facing his own criminal probe related to cost overruns during renovations of Fed properties - concerns he has called "pretexts".

From BBC ● Jan. 21, 2026

"The pretexts used to justify such actions are untenable. Ideological hostility has triumphed over businesslike pragmatism," it added.

From Barron's ● Jan. 3, 2026

In Philadelphia, for example, after the aforementioned drop in citations, the city decided to phase out police enforcement of minor traffic violations, including dubious pretexts like “rearview mirror decorations.”

From Slate ● Apr. 25, 2023

"All these facts, said they, are so public and so notorious that there are no means or pretexts for disavowing them."

From Secret Societies of the Middle Ages by Thomas Keightley