false colors

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false colors

noun
A deceptive outward appearance:
cloak, color, coloring, cover, disguise, disguisement, façade, face, front, gloss, guise, mask, masquerade, pretense, pretext, semblance, show, veil, veneer, window-dressing.
Slang: put-on.
The American Heritage® Roget's Thesaurus. Copyright © 2013, 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Mentioned in
References in classic literature
Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind.
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"I have sailed under false colors." I felt now as if I must tell her that I had given her an invented name, on account of my fear that her aunt would have heard of me and would refuse to take me in.
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I saw, in the glass, my skin take a false fairness, my cheeks a false color, my eyes a false brightness--and I never shrank from it.
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Her heart beat fast; a burning heat glowed in her as she thought of her false hair, her false color, her false dress, and saw the dear familiar face coming nearer and nearer.
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