facade

• façade

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

• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /fəˈsaːd/
• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /fəˈsɑːd/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑːd

facade (plural facades)

1. (architecture) The face of a building, especially the front view or elevation.
   • 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, Robert William Chambers, chapter V, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, OCLC 24962326:

     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 (ed.), Lone Star Law, 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 an organ.
3. (figuratively) A deceptive or insincere outward appearance; a front.

• (face of a building): face, front, frontage
• (deceptive outward appearance): appearance, cover, front, guise, pretence, show

• (front of a building): frontage
• (deceptive appearance): See Thesaurus:fake

• facade pattern

• facade at OneLook Dictionary Search
• “facade” in Merriam–Webster Online Dictionary.

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

• Rhymes: -aːdə

facade c (singular definite facaden, plural indefinite facader)

1. façade