Osten- sible/tatious
I was practicing GRE words at http://gre-word-test.com, and I sadly missed a question related to the word ostensible. I’m more familiar with the word ostentatious, but I want to be sure that I can properly distinguish between the two.
ostensible - meant for appearance; apparent
ostentatious - intended to attract notice; showy
They’re both derived from the Latin word meaning to display or exhibit.
I’ll take a break from British writers and look towards the classic American writer Mark Twain for some examples.
Here in The Prince and the Pauper Twain describes the display of a wedding ring as ostentatious.
There sat Elizabeth of York in the midst of an immense white rose, whose petals formed elaborate furbelows around her; by her side was Henry VII., issuing out of a vast red rose, disposed in the same manner: the hands of the royal pair were locked together, and the wedding-ring ostentatiously displayed.
In another writing, Twain uses ostensible to describe a horse believed to be seven, but in fact is fourteen years old.
I believed that this was insubordination, but I was full of uncertainties about everything military, and so I let the thing pass, and went and ordered Smith, the blacksmith’s apprentice, to feed the mule; but he merely gave me a large, cold, sarcastic grin, such as an ostensibly seven-year-old horse gives you when you lift his lip and find he is fourteen, and turned his back on me.
Tags: ostensible, ostentatious