FIGUREHEAD • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Figurehead

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/fˈɪgjərhˌɛd/ Listen

Figurehead

noun

A person used as a cover for some questionable activity. Synonyms: front, front man, nominal head, straw man, strawman.

Figure on the bow of some sailing vessels.

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"Figurehead" Quotes from Famous Books

... so frank a bargain driven with a king before? "Behold," says Norway in effect, "you may sit on a throne; but beware how you attempt to king it over us. We will give you a salary to transact our official business and act as official figurehead. But you must never overlook the fact that it was we who made ...

— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... front of the train, but after the winter of trial and probation, and difficulties of beginning are over, and the summer of success has come, his position, in regard to the artists, must be more like that of a figurehead. I have, however, great faith in the power of artists to make a figure-head useful as well as ornamental, although I do not know that they have shown a proof of this to-day by making their figure-head deliver a speech, which ...

— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... Doc Linyard. "Confound you for a pair of landlubbers! Don't you know an honest figurehead when you see it? Look at him! 'Pears to me he looks more straightforward ...

— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer

... of Meredith's not only hurt me, but almost destroyed my hope, though it did not alter my purpose. I wanted a figurehead for my petition, and the figurehead I had chosen I could not get. I began to wonder and doubt. I next approached a very different man, the late Professor Churton Collins, a great friend of mine, who, in spite of an almost pedantic rigour ...

— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... the words almost before they had fallen from the lips of the other. "Yes, I am the King. I am the miserable, gilded figurehead out on the prow, which serves no end and no purpose. I am the ornamental symbol of a system which the world is discarding! I am a medieval lay figure upon which to hang these tinsel decorations, ...

— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

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