pretendian
/pɹɪˈten.diː.ən/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
4
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A person who falsely claims to have Native American or Indigenous Canadian ancestry.
Derogatory; Informal
noun
Alternative letter-case form of Pretendian
Example Sentences
- "Natalie waited, expecting the usual white platitude, It's okay; I'm one-sixteenth Cherokee myself, or perhaps a dose of American Indian Princess Syndrome, or an acknowledgment of the glut of Pretendians of late."
- "Although the United States has a long history of white people “playing Indian,” as the scholar Philip J. Deloria calls it in his book of the same name, the 1990s saw the beginning of what would eventually be significant pushback by Native Americans against so-called Pretendians or Pretend Indians, including the successful passage of a national law prohibiting non-Native people from marketing their art as “Indian.”"
- "A Canadian woman who fraudulently claimed her daughters were Inuit has been sentenced to three years in jail, in what is believed to be the first ever custodial sentence for a “Pretendian”."
Etymology
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /pɹɪˈten.diː.ən/
- British English: /pɹɪˈten.diː.ən/