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What is "window dressing"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
window dressing
noun
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Critics say that the organization's call to include more minorities is just window dressing.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Granted some of the images are a little sanitised, but the good intentions can be clearly read through the window dressing.
▪ Hence the unmarked grave; still part of the window dressing.
▪ It is probably patronising to say that in both cases the window dressing is up to Kensington standards, but it is.
▪ The proposal seems no more than a window dressing exercise.
▪ We think that a couple of buy-outs will be allowed to succeed as a form of window dressing.
Wiktionary
window dressing

alt. 1 The decorative display of retail merchandise in store windows 2 The goods and trimmings used in such display 3 (context idiomatic uncountable English) A means of creating a deceptively favourable impression of something or someone; something for appearance only. n. 1 The decorative display of retail merchandise in store windows 2 The goods and trimmings used in such display 3 (context idiomatic uncountable English) A means of creating a deceptively favourable impression of something or someone; something for appearance only.

WordNet
window dressing

  1. n. a showy misrepresentation intended to conceal something unpleasant [syn: facade]

  2. the decoration of shop windows

Usage examples of "window dressing".

Zane suspected her job was more window dressing than anything else, something to keep her busy.

The ritual is only window dressing, a smoke screen that the murderers hope will throw you off.

The several speakers who immediately followed Robert Turner were really just window dressing.

The motive must have been window dressing again, in case of a sudden end to the war.

Most of the small shops had been replaced by huge government stores stores that were empty, shelves bare, despite their fancy window dressing.

That it is one of the many pretended sciences which have been confused with true magic and used as a kind of window dressing.