A person used as a cover for some questionable activity

Usage examples of figurehead.

Ophelia, like many figureheads of her day, had been arrayed upon the beakhead of the ship, rather than positioned below the bowsprit.

Besides a thorough holystone fore and aft, salt-stained sides were sluiced with fresh water, brightwork brought to a thorough gleam and the seadulled colors around the beakhead and figurehead touched up to their usual striking splendor.

His sister Belinda was a figurehead on a ship ofthe line, and the sailors fondled her bare breasts as they sat on the beakhead rails to relieve themselves.

Nate shook his head, looking as if he were fighting disbelief, but actually he was trying to shake the memory of his dream of driving a big cabin cruiser through the streets of Seattle with Amy displayed as the bikinied figurehead.

The frigate breasted the swell at exactly the same moment as Bucephalas and for the first time Harry could see her hull and figurehead.

Some were small, like the catboat, while others were enormous, with ivory sails and brass figureheads and gleaming hulls fitted with saw-toothed rams.

By this time Amy had mounted the prow like a sadomasochistic figurehead and Bart was thudding up and down the ladder loading the Zode with our war supplies.

He stalked away, muttering dire threats about turning mouthy figureheads into firewood.

Not only can the figureheads of these vessels move and speak, but they are also possessed of prodigious strength, enabling them to crush lesser vessels if once they grip them.

Next, in the Lycian plain of Xanthus, he beat off a band of Carian pirates led by one Cheimarrhus, a fiery and boastful warrior, who sailed in a ship adorned with a lion figurehead and a serpent stern.

In actuality, Styphon's Voice is typically a figurehead chosen to represent the interests of the Inner Circle of Archpriests, a closely connected group of thirty-six Archpriests which includes the highpriest of each Great Kingdom High Temples of Styphon.

Beyond lay the wreckage of the Arrow, driven ashore, its bow towering up so that the battered figurehead of the Indian warrior with his bowstrung arrow set to the cord now silently pointed up into the sky.

Not unlike that gigantic Chinese brigandess who half-killed me on the road to Nanking, but civilised, you understand, and willing to chat afterwards, in a frank, easy way which you'd not have expected from her lofty style and figurehead.

Everything was ready: under an awning that spread the brilliant light stood an upright chair, made fast to cleats, and in it sat Colley the patient, lead coloured, snoring still, and so tightly lashed by his friends that he was as incapable of independent movement as the ship's figurehead.

While I was seated up top contemplating the nighttime river, wondering about crows, he was up forward mounting his monster purchase as a figurehead.