veneer
Other forms: veneering; veneered; veneers
You know how some furniture looks like solid oak or maple until it gets chipped and reveals itself to be nothing more than some cheap particle-board covered with a thin layer of fancy wood? That thin layer is called a veneer.
A veneer can be anything that makes something look more elegant or attractive than it is. Originally it was a furniture word, but over time its meaning expanded. If someone smiles at you while making some passive-aggressive remark, like, "Gee, you actually look really nice today," you could say that her inner meanness is showing through her veneer of sweetness.
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coating consisting of a thin layer of superior wood glued to a base of inferior wood
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an ornamental coating to a building
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an outward or token appearance or form that is deliberately misleadingtypes:color of law, colour of lawa mere semblance of legal right; something done with the apparent authority of law but actually in contravention of lawsimulacruman insubstantial or vague semblanceface valuethe apparent worth as opposed to the real worthverisimilitudethe appearance of truth; the quality of seeming to be truetype of:
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cover with veneer“veneer the furniture to protect it”type of:coverprovide with a covering or cause to be covered
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Vocabulary lists containing veneer
Zora Neale Hurston did not finish high school until her late 20s, and she was closing in on 40 by the time she graduated from Barnard College. Despite her struggles, she went on to success as a writer and anthropologist. Her upbeat spirit is evident in her personal essay. Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 11 Unit 5's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: The Harlem Renaissance, The New Negro, To Usward, Lift Every Voice and Sing, On 'From the Dark Tower' , How It Feels to Be Colored Me, Sweat, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Mother to Son, critical reviews
In this second book of The Heroes of Olympus series, Percy Jackson, Hazel Levesque, and Frank Zhang, recognized as the children of Roman gods at Camp Jupiter, journey to Alaska to free Thanatos, the god of death.