window dressing

window dressing

1. Literally, a decorative display in a window, typically the window of a store. When my mom and I go shopping at Christmastime, we always check out all the pretty holiday window dressings!
2. By extension, something that makes a person or thing look or seem better than it really is. To me, this new policy seems like window dressing to woo new employees. You say that you've changed, but how do I know it's not just window dressing to make you seem like less of a jerk?
See also: dressing, window
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • bay window
  • window
  • Windows
  • be wide open
  • wide open
  • crack a/the window (open)
  • (it) won't bother me at all/any
  • as a (general) rule
  • as a rule
  • be in for it
References in periodicals archive
The key players in the Global Window Dressing Market are GRABER, Hunter Douglas, Kathy Ireland Home by Alta and Newell Rubbermaid while other prominent vendors include BAUHAUS, Bunnings, Carrefour, Homebase, Home Depot, IKEA, Kingfisher, KOMERI, Leggett & Platt, Leroy Merlin, Lowe's, Menard, OBI, RONA and Walmart
Index funds do not confront issues of window dressing and will always possess the components of the index they track, or they will follow a sampling method--owning a portion of the constituents to track their respective index--and must only address any tracking errors to their underlying index.
One thing that might help the category is the change in how the consumer perceives window dressings. Keryk said that in the past, soft window treatments used to be both functional and fashionable.
Was the use of language associated with the evangelical moral vision in the outer circles of southern society an essential part of what held southerners together, or did it serve as little more than window dressing?
"I don't believe in creating marketing programs that are fluffy, or window dressing to make a client look good so they can just check it off their list.
So it is difficult to see, in the often chaotic display of ecological projects, just what will really count and what is mere window dressing. The solar collectors on the front of Frey's building, for example, have become an obvious symbol of ecological concern, almost a cliche.
I'm tempted to bet that this kind of realist impulse is Bock's core motivation, and that the Barney and McCarthy borrowings, with their transformative, fictional implications, are window dressing. But essentializing Bock is a dicey proposition.
The disaster limit generally turns out to be window dressing, unless there is a hurricane or other natural disaster that hits most of an insured's jobs when they are almost all complete--which is unlikely.
Where the latter signaled a war on racism and poverty, only to accelerate neighborhood decay and offer window dressing, the former has sent different signals.
In our view, the testimony about consultation was mere window dressing to conceal tax motives.
The final communique of the Synod was entitled "We joyfully witness to the Gospel of Hope in Europe." One may ask: "Is this just window dressing? Why 'hope' in the face of crisis and collapse?"
And like that overused phrase "paradigm shift" the term "ethical hunter" can also be used as convenient window dressing. Andrea Lococo of the Rocky Mountain office of the Fund for Animals makes the point that "most hunters I meet profess to be ethical hunters.
From America, to where the innovating torch passed by the turn of the century, came advances in window dressing, new managerial and merchandising practices, and the palpable transfer of all these techniques with the building of Selfridge's.
Mumbai: Private sector lender Yes Bank Thursday said it has not indulged in any window dressing of its corporate accounts to conceal non-performing assets (NPAs).
Traders said semester end window dressing by fund managers helped prop up the index.