Synonyms:
pretext, stalking-horse
Meaning: something serving to conceal plans; a fictitious reason that is concocted in order to conceal the real reason
Usage examples
And always that same pretext is offered--it looks like the thing.
The Kelpie looked suspicious as he left the room, but she had no pretext for interference.
He felt for the wounded lady, and hastened to see her; but she, under some pretext, refused to see him.
For he desired to find some pretext for war against the Dryopians for their bane, since they dwelt there reckless of right.
"I am from America, and I would like to see the gallery." She must do so to give a pretext for having come to visit an empty house.
"That I have been made a fool of; that Buckingham was only a pretext, and that Guiche is the one who is really to blame in the matter."
Two girls passing through the hall made a pretext of looking for a book and came in and exclaimed over their inability to find it with much suppressed giggling.
After breakfast Alethia, on the pretext of going to look at an outlying rose-garden, slipped away to the village through which they had passed on the previous evening.
Douglas, seizing only too gladly the pretext to use denunciation instead of argument, replied in his opening speech, in turn stigmatizing them as "abolition confederates"
On the pretext of wanting to give some dinner to her dolls, she had asked the governess's permission to take her share of tart to the nursery, and had taken it instead to her brother.