window dressing

as in facade
a deceptively attractive external appearance the crime-does-not-pay moralizing is just window dressing for nasty hard-boiled stories

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Recent Examples of window dressing All that stuff in the film’s early scenes about Blake’s relationship with his dad, his daughter, and his wife wind up feeling like window dressing. Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 15 Jan. 2025 National Guardsmen have plenty of training and shouldn’t be depicted as political window dressing. Voice Of The People, New York Daily News, 12 Mar. 2024 The series is still going strong thanks to numerous sequels and a spinoff, wading into such over-the-top territory that the initial street racing conceit is now little more than window dressing. Declan Gallagher, EW.com, 20 Nov. 2024 Steichen and his staff took the best option plays from all levels of football and mixed them with NFL window dressing. Ted Nguyen, The Athletic, 22 Aug. 2024 See All Example Sentences for window dressing

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“Window dressing.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/window%20dressing. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

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