The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
PRETENTIOUS
Definition of PRETENTIOUS
adjective
Motivated by an inappropriate, excessive, or unjustified desire to impress others.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From French prétentieux, from prétention, from Latin praetēnsus (“false or hypocritical profession”), past participle of praetendō. Note that pretentious is spelled with a ‘t’, unlike related pretense, pretension. This is due to the French spelling: *-sious does not occur as an English suffix, though -sion and -tion both do.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
2 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
1st
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
30.6%
of traced words share this origin (25,170)
branch · 30.6% of traced words
How it is built
Same root, PRETENTIOUS · 1 relative in the game
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
PRETENTIOUS in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 5 boards so far. 23 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 1, 22 May 2026. The most recent board was Day 138, 5 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 27 days.
First found by a player on Day 1, 22 May 2026.
Built from these letters
PRETENTIOUS starts with P and ends with S. Sorted, its letters read EEINOPRSTTU - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. E and T appear more than once.
Words that start PRETENT
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 1
Could you have found PRETENTIOUS?
OUTLIER is a daily word game. One grid, the same grid for everybody, and the words nobody else spots are the ones that pay. This word was on Day 1 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER