pretext
B2CEFR level
40/100Rarity: uncommon
NeutralRegister
General noun
An ostensible reason offered to conceal the true motive for an action.
National security served as a pretext for tightening censorship.
Law noun
A false but lawful-sounding reason advanced to mask an unlawful motive for an employment action.
The 'restructuring' rationale is pretext; they eliminated only the positions held by pregnant staff.
Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.
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