You might be pretentious if…
[ul]
[li]…you’ve ever used the phrase “quintessential Rum Tum Tugger.”[/li][li]…you’ve actually participated in a heated argument over who makes the best home cappuccino machine.[/li][li]…you’ve ever referred to something you’ve purchased as “my art.”[/li][li]…you had the ringer on your cell phone reprogrammed to play your favorite passage from Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen.[/li][li]…you have a favorite passage from Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen.[/li][/ul]
“Pretentious? Moi?”
Whew! I’m safe (though only because I don’t like music or coffe and I don’t know what a Rum Tum Tugger is).
Well, I AM an elitist snob, but pretentious? I hope not.
“The problem with being better than everyone else is that people tend to think you’re pretentious.”
People tend to think I’m conceited, but that’s flaw, and, naturally, I have none.
Of course not. I really am the quintessence of tastefully understated gentility.
Nahh, dropping French words into conversation/writing isn’t pretentious any more.
Nowadays it’s German words you drop in for snob factor.
viz:*
lebensraum
zeitgeist[sub]A personal least favorite - I read every issue of Entertainment Weekly to see if I can find it. It’s always there.[/sub]
sturm und drang
weltenschaung (sp?)
[sub]*oh, yeah, Latin never goes outta style for pretentiousness.[/sub]
Jesus, I agree with your first three bullets, but trashing Wagner is just not right.
I have several favorite passages from the Ring, by the way.
MR
I would answer that question. But I would never lower myself to talking to someone with les than 20 posts. hmph!
Yes.
But I’m willing to participate in an intervention.
Well, I’ve never put much stock in the quantity of posts. I consider quality to be much more important. And my posts are the finest, hand-crafted, designer original posts that money can buy.
Have I a God complex? Of course not. God has a BlackKnight complex.
My chauffeur can beat the crap out of your chauffeur.
Oh, how bourgeois this conversation is. (And damn you Rodd Hill for beating me to it!)
[serious] Tygr, I really doubt anyone would drop the term lebensraum in a normal conversation if they knew where it came from. That is not a word any German would want to hear used loosely. [/serious]
OrcaChow, do you have any Grey Poupon left? If so, I will send my chauffeur’s servant for it.
But why, SkinnyGuy…doesn’t it just mean “living room”, you know as in Den, Parlor, ect. 
Heh, I guess I must be pretenious, because I am forever dropping German into my conversations…but for real snob value, I use Korean!
Nope, but boring ole me. Damn!
My cell phone plays Ode to Joy, not pretentious at all.
**
Oy! I kann drop kraut words at zee drop of mein kampf.
Und, I haven’t a focking clue of vhat hav ov zem mean.
sanks to zee thrill I get from mocking zee German Culture. I guess I should have been paying attention.
Ach du Liebe.
Some people think that going to a Venerable Ivy League College [sub]TM[/sub] will, by default, make someone pretentious.
It’s really just the Harvard students.