facade

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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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  • IPA(key): /fəˈsɑːd/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɑːd

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[1], 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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Further reading

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  • facade”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
  • facade”, in Merriam-Webster 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. façade

Inflection

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