facade

plural facades · alternative façade

1. architectureThe face of a building, especially the front view or elevation.

   Eight or so gunmen stood shoulder to shoulder in the gray-white trail before the barn, firing into the saloon's burning, bullet-pocked facade.

   2005, Peter Brandvold, “Ghost Colts”, in Robert J. Randisi, editor, Lone Star Law, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 179

   3 more examples

   In Egypt the façades of their rock-cut tombs were[…]ornamented so simply and unobtrusively as rather to belie than to announce their internal magnificence.

   1865, James Fergusson, A History of Architecture in All Countries

   Like so many of the finest churches, [the cathedral of Siena] was furnished with a plain substantial front wall, intended to serve as the backing and support of an ornamental façade.

   1880, Charles Eliot Norton, Historical Studies of Church-Building in the Middle Ages

   The house of Ruthven was a small but ultra-modern limestone affair, between Madison and Fifth ;[…]. As a matter of fact its narrow ornate façade presented not a single quiet space that the eyes might rest on after a tiring attempt to follow and codify the arabesques, foliations, and intricate vermiculations of what some disrespectfully dubbed as “near-aissance.”

   1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter V, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC

   Synonyms: face, front, frontage

2. broadlyThe face or front (most visible side) of any other thing, such as the prospect of an organ.
3. figurativelyA deceptive or insincere outward appearance.

   Synonyms: appearance, cover, front, guise, pretence, Potemkin village

4. computingAn object serving as a simplified interface to a larger body of code, as in the facade pattern.

   Facades are widely used for tasks like simplifying complex APIs.

   2017, Evan Burchard, Refactoring JavaScript: Turning Bad Code Into Good Code, O'Reilly Media, →ISBN, page 311

present singular third person facades · participle present facading · participle past facaded · past facaded · alternative façade

1. figurativelyraretransitiveTo cover or disguise an outward appearance.

   Nancy is not that tired and exhausted, yet she facades her fatigue to escape from this silly revision of the concepts.

   2021, Abhi, The BAG-G-AGE

   5 more examples

   Una was not happy in that small and self-immured company, already bound together by its big year on Broadway. But she façaded her unrest with a determination to improve her mind.

   1943, Arthur Stringer, Star in a Mist, A Novel, page 180

   The parks observed at the entrance, with their fountains and benches and circular drives, were no "Potemkin's villages" facading the lanscape for official visits.

   1960, Press and Information Office, Embassy of the Republic of Viet-Nam, “The Agrovilles: A New Prospect In Viet Nam”, in News from Viet-Nam, volume 6, number 7, page 5

   In fantasy he facades a happy childhood, but in reality it was extremely lonely, and it would appear that he had probably been breast fed through a pair of falsies.

   1980, LA Law Library, California, Court of Appeal (1st Appellate District), Records and Briefs, 2CRIM40517, Petition for Writ, page 6

   I don't equate class clown with confidence. Most times, a person acting out like this (clowining) displays the opposite - someone who is insecure enough to be themself so they facade their true feelings via jokes, put downs, laughter, and plain old attention getting the wrong way.

   2005 October 25, JimSummers, “Issue of confidence? Too simple”, in alt.support.shyness (Usenet)

   In his speech at Dacca, Curzon put forward his notorious plan of 'bifurcating Bengal' (as he preferred to call it), facading the communal overtones with the mask of good governance.

   2020, Jaydip Sarkar, Rupayan Mukherjee (editors), Partition Literature and Cinema, A Critical Introduction