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facade

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: façade

English

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The facade of a building with concert halls and exhibition galleries

Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Borrowed from French façade, from Italian facciata, a derivation of faccia (“front”), from Latin faciēs (“face”); compare face.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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facade (plural facades)

  1. (architecture) The face of a building, especially the front view or elevation.
    Synonyms: face, front, frontage
    • 1865, James Fergusson, A History of Architecture in All Countries:
      In Egypt the façades of their rock-cut tombs were […] ornamented so simply and unobtrusively as rather to belie than to announce their internal magnificence.
    • 1880, Charles Eliot Norton, Historical Studies of Church-Building in the Middle Ages:
      Like so many of the finest churches, [the cathedral of Siena] was furnished with a plain substantial front wall, intended to serve as the backing and support of an ornamental façade.
    • 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter V, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:
      The house of Ruthven was a small but ultra-modern limestone affair, between Madison and Fifth ; […]. As a matter of fact its narrow ornate façade presented not a single quiet space that the eyes might rest on after a tiring attempt to follow and codify the arabesques, foliations, and intricate vermiculations of what some disrespectfully dubbed as “near-aissance.”
    • 2005, Peter Brandvold, “Ghost Colts”, in Robert J. Randisi, editor, Lone Star Law‎[2], Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 179:
      Eight or so gunmen stood shoulder to shoulder in the gray-white trail before the barn, firing into the saloon's burning, bullet-pocked facade.
  2. (by extension) The face or front (most visible side) of any other thing, such as the prospect of an organ.
  3. (figuratively) A deceptive or insincere outward appearance.
    Synonyms: appearance, cover, front, guise, pretence; see also Thesaurus:fake
  4. (programming) An object serving as a simplified interface to a larger body of code, as in the facade pattern.
    • 2017, Evan Burchard, Refactoring JavaScript: Turning Bad Code Into Good Code, O'Reilly Media, →ISBN, page 311:
      Facades are widely used for tasks like simplifying complex APIs.

Derived terms

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Translations

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Verb

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facade (third-person singular simple present facades, present participle facading, simple past and past participle facaded)

  1. (figurative, transitive, rare) To cover or disguise an outward appearance.
    • 1943, Arthur Stringer, Star in a Mist, A Novel, page 180:
      Una was not happy in that small and self-immured company, already bound together by its big year on Broadway. But she façaded her unrest with a determination to improve her mind.
    • 1960, Press and Information Office, Embassy of the Republic of Viet-Nam, “The Agrovilles: A New Prospect In Viet Nam”, in News from Viet-Nam‎[3], volume 6, number 7, page 5:
      The parks observed at the entrance, with their fountains and benches and circular drives, were no "Potemkin's villages" facading the lanscape for official visits.
    • 1980, LA Law Library, California, Court of Appeal (1st Appellate District), Records and Briefs, 2CRIM40517, Petition for Writ, page 6:
      In fantasy he facades a happy childhood, but in reality it was extremely lonely, and it would appear that he had probably been breast fed through a pair of falsies.
    • 2005 October 25, JimSummers, “Issue of confidence? Too simple”, in alt.support.shyness‎[4] (Usenet):
      I don't equate class clown with confidence. Most times, a person acting out like this (clowining) displays the opposite - someone who is insecure enough to be themself so they facade their true feelings via jokes, put downs, laughter, and plain old attention getting the wrong way.
    • 2020, Jaydip Sarkar, Rupayan Mukherjee (editors), Partition Literature and Cinema, A Critical Introduction:
      In his speech at Dacca, Curzon put forward his notorious plan of 'bifurcating Bengal' (as he preferred to call it), facading the communal overtones with the mask of good governance.
    • 2021, Abhi, The BAG-G-AGE:
      Nancy is not that tired and exhausted, yet she facades her fatigue to escape from this silly revision of the concepts.
    • 2023, Lavina Chhabra, The Flawed Ink, page 45:
      Susan's heart melts on hearing the word mom. She doesn't hear it enough. She facades her toughness, "You both are grounded. No more TV, or cycling, or anything else except for studies. Do you understand?"
    • 2024, Noah Cecil, Unlasting:
      Or he could go straight and walk right into the facility's open area where they facade their true scandals from the public eye.

References

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  1. ^ Luick, Karl (1929-1940), Herbert Wild, Friedrich Koziol, editors, Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache‎[1], Erster Band, II. Abteilung, Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, published 1940, →OCLC, § 580, page 751.

Further reading

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  • “facade”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
  • “facade”, in Merriam-Webster.com Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

Danish

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Etymology

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From French façade, from Italian facciata, a derivation of faccia (“front”), from Latin faciēs (“face”).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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facade c (singular definite facaden, plural indefinite facader)

  1. facade

Inflection

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Declension of facade
common
gender 		singular plural
indefinite definite indefinite definite
nominative facade facaden facader facaderne
genitive facades facadens facaders facadernes
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