At the root of the word, Pretentious comes from the Latin praetendere: to stretch forward, to reach beyond where you currently stand. Today, the word pretentious has become one of those adjectives that seems to mean everything and nothing at once. The way we use “pretentious” today has quietly discouraged more genuine creative pursuits than almost any other word. Few words do much damage while meaning so little. You know it when you see it; or so we think. The word has no shortage of synonyms: arrogant, showy, grandiose, or “performative”. There is no strong, agreed-upon definition, which is precisely the problem. I hate that the new meaning of the word ‘pretentious’ is weaponized to discourage us from being bold and passionate. This post is an attempt to bring the broken meaning of this word back into focus, because how we use it and who we use it against reveals something uncomfortable about the way we treat ambition, curiosity, and the very human act of trying.
To label someone pretentious usually comes down to questioning their motivation behind what they’re doing. Someone is pretentious, we say, when they are performing a version of themselves, trying to impress others, or reaching for an identity that doesn’t yet belong to them. It is mostly a matter of authenticity. And here is the quiet irony: isn’t calling someone pretentious also a pretentious thing to say? It sounds like a judgment that presumes you know better.
Are we all performing?
Consider how rarely we apply this label consistently. Nobody calls the office worker who dresses “professionally” pretentious. Nobody rolls their eyes at the child who checks out books above their reading level. In fact, we encourage this behavior; we say that is an exemplary thing, they’re stretching forward for growth. We accept, without question, that people speak differently to their grandmother than to their best friend, differently to their boss than to the stranger on the street. We edit part of ourselves depending on the setting and the audience. To be frank, we all want to be perceived well to some degree. We all aspire to be a slightly greater version of who we are at the moment.
If this reasoning holds, then we are all a little pretentious. We simply don’t notice it until someone else reaches for the culture and social markers that are deemed as “higher class” and exposes part of ourselves.
Pretentiousness as a social bound
Certain things, such as food, clothing, music, sports, hobbies, and aesthetic taste, have long been coded as belonging to certain “elite social groups”. When someone who seems to be “an outsider” of that social group shows some interest in those things, the label “pretentious” arrives swiftly. But look at what that label is actually doing: it is enforcing class boundaries. It is saying, “You can only enjoy what your social class permits you to enjoy”. In this instance, the label is used as a social shame to prevent social mobility.
That creates a lot of issues here. You are polarizing people. You’re shutting down natural expressions of curiosity and creativity. In this context, it’s usually not a kind thing to label someone in such a way; it’s a hurtful thing to say the least. And it says more about the accuser than the accused. The defendant may or may not be seeking approval; we cannot know their inner motivation. But the accuser, by dismissing something as pretentious, may be revealing to their own sense that the thing is beyond their reach. Labeling it pretentious is the easiest way to shut it down without having to engage with it.
Assuming the worst of other people’s intentions is usually not a great way to approach life. When you shut down someone’s genuine effort to explore new interests, you are not protecting authenticity; you are discouraging it. You may not necessarily like all the music, books, paintings, or movies ever created in the world, you’re not obligated to do so. In fact, the platforms we use encourage us to curate everything to fit our taste. But what we don’t get to do is shut down other people’s attempts simply because we don’t get it. We don’t have the right to discourage others from their pure interest endeavors.
On Trying
Consider what it actually looks like to develop a taste for something unfamiliar. Let’s say that you aspire to become someone who loves art. And you are not that person yet. So you go to the gallery. You stand in front of a single piece for longer than feels comfortable. You look at the art piece pretending that you like it. Over time, you learn what you can: the medium, the technique, the materials, the historical context. At first, you may not enjoy it. But your motivation to grow into this version of yourself keeps you going. You may spend months or years pursuing something before you even know whether you genuinely love it or were simply attracted to the identity it represented. In that period, you probably cannot tell the difference between real interest and performance, even to yourself. That uncertainty is unsettling. That is the real risk. Most people avoid it entirely. But luckily for you and me, eventually, something always connects. You may not like all the art pieces made in the world, but you will find your niche, the work that speaks to your soul, and you’ll carry it forward as your own.
If that process holds some truth and is necessary for acquiring taste(or becoming), then we should be a little more pretentious. And I know the meaning of the word doesn’t sound so positive and insulting to be labeled as such. But if I want to be a kind of person that enjoys x, I must pretend to sit in the monotonous process of pretending to enjoy x until I truly get it. Throughout my life, I wasn’t really a big reader; I was the type that read only when it was required at school and not for enjoyment. But only in recent years have I started carving out time to read for enjoyment. At first, I had to sit in quietness and read the book, pretending that I was enjoying it. Initially, it was uncomfortable, but eventually I started enjoying reading. My motivation to become the sort of person who reads did the heavy lifting. This is not fraud. This is, on some level, how taste is actually acquired. To some extent, it is a bit of “pretending” or “faking it until you make it”. Perhaps that’s the toll price to pay through taste acquisition. I consider it to be the necessary labor of becoming.
This brings us back to the root of the word itself. Pretentious: to stretch forward, to reach beyond where you currently stand. The etymology is not contemptuous. It is almost admirable. To stretch yourself is inherently to risk failure, to risk carrying more than you can hold. And yet that is precisely what humans have always done to advance.
Countless things we rely on today exist because someone reached beyond the limits of what was considered normal for their “social class”. When we throw the label of pretentiousness at those people, we are essentially telling them they should not try because they might not succeed. Said plainly, that is absurd and not fair.
The world needs people who care just a little more than everyone else about their work or that one specific niche interest. People who see their endeavors as grand, even larger than life. People who take what they do seriously enough to be misunderstood for it. That commitment to one’s specific interest is what makes the world a little brighter.
So go out in the world, experience art, talk passionately about your niche interest, make music. Build. Write that essay. Make that painting. Write an article about every detail of that bottle of wine. Don’t let the fear of being labeled as pretentious take over your interest. So what if they call you weird? Who cares! Be bold. Be passionate. Be fully yourself. Be pretentious. Because the world is not shaped by those who play it safe socially. It is shaped by those who risk being misunderstood. What we dismiss as pretentious is often just someone refusing to shrink. Someone going beyond the frontier of knowledge or what is “normal” to pursue. And sometimes, the only difference between a fraud and a visionary is whether they dared to keep going, not for approval, but for the thing in itself.