🗓️ Idiom: Window Dressing (n)
💬 Meaning
- Making something look better on the surface but not on the inside.
- Changing the appearance of a report, product, or action to hide problems or seem more responsible.
🧠 Example Sentences
- The company’s CSR report looked good, but many said it was just window dressing.
- Adding a few solar panels for the photo was seen as window dressing, not real change.
- The charity event was more about window dressing than about helping people.
🏛️ Origin
This idiom comes from the practice of decorating shop windows to attract customers. Over time, it began to mean making something look good on the outside to hide the true inside. It is now often used in business and politics.
📝 Practice Exercises
1. Fill in the blank:
The company’s environmental ad campaign was just ________ to distract from its pollution record.
Answer
window dressing
2. Multiple choice:
What does “window dressing” mean?
a) Fixing real problems
b) Making something look better than it really is
c) Putting products in a shop window
Answer
b) Making something look better than it really is
3. Rewrite the sentence:
“They tried to make their actions look better than they really were.”
Answer
They used window dressing to cover their actions.
ℹ️ Other Useful Pages
Rob is a CELTA qualified English teacher with 15 years of international experience. He has a BSc and PGDip from Loughborough and St Andrews universities in the UK. He has taught in Thailand and Saudi Arabia and now works with professionals worldwide.
