smokescreen

plural smokescreens · alternative smoke screen · alternative smoke-screen

1. Smoke used as a disguise, mask or cover, as of troops in battle.

   C.I.E. Class "D14" 4-4-0 No. 89 covers its tracks with a magnificent smokescreen as it pulls out of Dun Laoghaire with the 9.0 a.m. boat train for Dublin.

   1959 September, “Talking of Trains”, in Trains Illustrated, page 401, photo caption

   2 more examples

   Ensign Whitely began to tell of the surprise encounter of Admiral Sprague’s escort-carrier force with the main battle line of the Japanese Navy off Samar, in a chaos of rain squalls and smoke screens.

   1951, Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Chapter 25, Part 5, p. 284

   However, before most of this was experimentally and observationally discovered, they were perhaps best known for their “almost unique” ability to squirt ink when harangued, creating a smokescreen before jetting off to safety.

   2017 August 9, Mark Carnall, “Why do cephalopods produce ink? And what's ink made of, anyway?”, in The Guardian

2. figurativelyAnything used metaphorically to conceal or distract.

   All that talk is just a smokescreen to disguise the fact that he has nothing to say.

   1 more example

   It was all very plausible and, as he poured out his smokescreen of words, I became fidgety for fear Fallon would be too direct with him.

   1968, Desmond Bagley, chapter 8, in The Vivero Letter, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, page 163