facade

• façade (French spelling with the cedilla)

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

• IPA^(key): /fəˈsɑːd/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑːd

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, 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.

   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.

• facade pattern

• “facade”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “facade”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

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

• IPA^(key): [faˈsæːðə]
• Rhymes: -aːdə

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: fa‧ca‧de

facade c (singular definite facaden, plural indefinite facader)

1. façade