Fig-leaf

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Alternative spelling of fig leaf. alt-of, alternative

    "And now it's quite obvious that instead of Mr [Donald] Rumsfeld and Mr. [Dick] Cheney listening attentively to Mr Blair's sage advice, they've simply been using him as a patsy - a convenient fig-leaf."

Example

More examples

"And now it's quite obvious that instead of Mr [Donald] Rumsfeld and Mr. [Dick] Cheney listening attentively to Mr Blair's sage advice, they've simply been using him as a patsy - a convenient fig-leaf."

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.