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say it: ah-STEN-suh-buhl
ostensible is an adjective meaning "appearing as such but not necessarily so". It carries 2 recorded senses.
appearing as such but not necessarily so
“for all his apparent wealth he had no money to pay the rent”
“the committee investigated some apparent discrepancies”
“the ostensible truth of their theories”
“his seeming honesty”
represented or appearing as such; pretended
“His ostensible purpose was charity, his real goal popularity”
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for ostensible come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.