Unpretentious means modest, and making no show of importance. An unpretentious restaurant, unpretentious and welcoming, refreshingly unpretentious.
It is one of the highest compliments in British English, where making a show of anything is the sin. Of a restaurant it usually means good food and no tablecloths.
1adjectiveunpretentiousModest, and making no show of importance.
“The hotel is small and unpretentious, but the rooms are clean and the staff are friendly.”
unpretentious is a quality.
Proto-Indo-European
*tend-
Latin
praetēnsus — false or hypocritical profession
French
prétentieux
English
pretentious
English, today
unpretentious
From un- + pretentious. pretentious comes from French prétentieux, from prétention, from Latin praetēnsus (“false or hypocritical profession”), past participle of praetendō. Note that pretentious is spelled with a ‘t’, unlike related pretense, pretension. This is due to the French spelling: *-sious does not occur as an English suffix, though -sion and -tion both do.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA