Veneer

The veneer we call civilisation is only skin deep.

Augustus kept only the veneer of the Republic while effectively making himself into a king.

The Bolsheviks disempowered the workers' councils, replacing them with direct Bolshevik rule under the veneer of council rule.

Compartment and corridor partitions are of blockboard, with appropriate decorative veneers to suit the varied interior decoration.

A very neat old woman, still in her good outdoor coat and best beehive hat, was sitting at a polished mahogany table on whose surface there were several scored scratches so deep that a triangular piece of the veneer had come cleanly away,[…].

“Yalda,” Dabashi says, “has managed to survive the centuries because it has been gently recodified with a Muslim veneer.”

to veneer a piece of furniture with mahogany

The stateroom walls are veneered with finely figured English chestnut with the skirting and mouldings in English walnut.

[O]ne / Discuss'd his tutor, rough to common men / But honeying at the whisper of a lord; / And one the Master, as a rogue in grain / Veneer'd with sanctimonious theory.

The currently advocated Family Protection Act, which thinly veneers its discriminatory attitudes about strict social conformity and the disallowance of individual choice with a stated concern for today's social fabric.