The phrase "ability to pretend" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when discussing someone's skill or capacity to feign emotions, actions, or situations.
Example: "Her ability to pretend to be happy during the party was impressive, even though she was feeling down inside."
Alternatives: "capacity for deception" or "skill in feigning".
You lose all ability to pretend that the air is something you can't be harmed by.
My family has a powerful ability to pretend their problems will just go away.
Turnbull, he says, "can come up with an actual joke on the run", whereas opposition leader Bill Shorten's ability to "pretend to be in the moment is so lacking that it just sounds like a plodding regurgitation of something he's been told to say".
By age four, we are aliens, flamboyantly different from them, largely by virtue of what may be our most exceptional trait our ability to pretend, prevaricate, play.
By age four, we are aliens, flamboyantly different from them, largely by virtue of what may be our most exceptional trait--our ability to pretend, prevaricate, play.
Therefore, your ability to pretend that you are thinking on the spot - or, even better, that you have been put on the spot - and have been forced to sincerely report on your biggest weaknesses, is likely to make a better impact on your interviewers than seeming prepared or scripted would.
In the current age of social media, we all, of course, have the ability to publicly pretend we're always hilarious and wonderful.
Intentionalist accounts maintain that what underlies the ability to engage in pretense behavior is the ability to intend to pretend or to act as though the contents of the pretense episode were true (Searle 1979; Rakoczy, Tomasello and Striano 2004).
But this is only possible after someone has learnt to pretend to be angry or jealous and presupposes the ability that creatures have learnt to display these behaviours at will.
Natural abilities are clearly evident in fields from mathematics to track, and it's silly to pretend on grounds of democracy that they aren&apos t.
