façade

A form of facade — The face of a building, especially the front view or elevation.

Meanings

nounfaçade (plural façades)

plural façades

  1. alternativeAlternative form of facade.

    he wanted to know who she was deep down inside, the real Penny behind the pleasant, people-pleasing façade, as was her fate as a woman and mother

    2019, Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other, Penguin Books (2020), page 291
    3 more examples

    If Euston is not typically English, St. Pancras is. Its façade is a nightmare of improbable Gothic. It is fairly plastered with the aesthetic ideals of 1868, and the only beautiful thing about it is Barlow's roof. It is haunted by the stuffier kind of ghost. Yet there is something about the ordered whole of St. Pancras that would make demolition a terrible pity.

    1941 August, C. Hamilton Ellis, “The English Station”, in Railway Magazine, page 358

    I wandered across to the window and looked out. Quite consciously I began saying good-bye to it all. The sun was low. Towers, spires, and façades of Portland stone were white or pink against the dimming sky.

    1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 85

    From the 4th Century BCE onwards, the Lycians built rock-hewn "house" tombs – often funeral chambers carved into cliffs, with the rock face around the doorway cut to imitate the façade of a wooden Lycian house, complete with "timbers" and protruding "joists".

    2023 September 7, Alastair Gill, “The ancient civilisation that inspired US democracy”, in BBC Travel, archived from the original on 24 Sep 2023

Synonyms & antonyms

Origin

  1. Frenchfaçade
  2. Englishfaçade

Unadapted borrowing from French façade.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

façade. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fa%C3%A7ade

MLA

“façade.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fa%C3%A7ade. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “façade,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fa%C3%A7ade.

Source: façade on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.