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Figurehead   /fˈɪgjərhˌɛd/   Listen
Figurehead

noun
1.
A person used as a cover for some questionable activity.  Synonyms: front, front man, nominal head, straw man, strawman.
2.
Figure on the bow of some sailing vessels.






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"Figurehead" Quotes from Famous Books



... replied, as if she had been explaining most fully. "You are the figurehead, the goddess of the machine. You will see that all goes right, and give Lord Wolfer his breakfast, and preside at the dinner when ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... analogy of a supposed Gr. [Greek: boukentauros], ox-centaur (from [Greek: bous] and [Greek: Kentauros]). This led to the explanation of the name as derived from the head of an ox having served as the galley's figurehead. This derivation is, however, fanciful; the name bucentaurus is unknown in ancient mythology, and the figurehead of the bucentaurs, of which representations have come down to us, is the lion of St Mark. [v.04 p.0658] The name bucentaur seems, indeed, to have been given to any ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... accomplished it, when David Hull appeared. A new personality; a plausible personality, deceptive because self-deceiving—yet not so thoroughly self-deceived that it was in danger of hindering its own ambition. David Hull—just the kind of respectable, popular figurehead and cloak the desperate ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... propose to linger over the perruque. The Restoration was a time of carnival when, if the men were overdressed, the ladies were underdressed; and the perruque was a part of the masquerade. In such a figurehead you could be as licentious as you chose—and you were; you could only be serious in satire. The perruque accounts for Dryden and his learned pomp, for Rochester and Sedley, and for Congreve, who told Voltaire that he desired to be considered as a gentleman ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... which throughout the proceedings had been as expressionless as that of a wooden figurehead, now ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... caught the mood of the popular party, and he happened to be on the right side. It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of the services he rendered to Wilkes and to the cause of which Wilkes was the figurehead by his work in the Middlesex election. The zeal of Horne, the friendship of Temple, the daring of Wilkes carried the day. It was no ordinary victory. It was an astonishing triumph. As Burke pointed out, the same causes did not operate upon the freeholders at large which ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... It means to be jammed back in a mold that will turn me out to the family pattern. It means a willingness to give up thinking for myself and accept YOUR thoughts and shape my life by them. It means being a figurehead as long as you live and a replica of yourself when you are ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... these advisers and their lords were in their thinking, they did not dare to trample openly on the old tradition. The emperor might in practice be a completely powerless figurehead, but he belonged nevertheless, according to tradition, to a family of divine origin, which had obtained its office not merely by the exercise of force but through a "divine mandate". Accordingly, if one of the feudal lords thought of putting forward a claim to the imperial throne, he felt ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... out as symbols and convenient indications of some particular group or temperament of opinions. To the latter it is that Sir Thomas More belongs. An age and a type of mind have found in him and his Utopia a figurehead and a token; and pleasant and honourable as his personality and household present themselves to the modern reader, it is doubtful if they would by this time have retained any peculiar distinction among the many other contemporaries of whom we have chance glimpses in letters and ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... brave lad you were, and smart too," answered Silver, shaking hands so heartily that all the barrel shook, "and a finer figurehead for a gentleman of fortune I never clapped ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... conjecture, we have the key to the large popularity of the delusion—as I think it. We have long ceased in England to take much interest in saints, and in the recent revival of the cultus of St. George, the saint is little more than a patriotic figurehead. And the appeal to the saints to succour us is certainly not a common English practice; it is held Popish by most of our countrymen. But angels, with certain reservations, have retained their popularity, and so, when it was settled that the ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen

... a good deal of an exhibit, in his way. His togs were cut to fit his spars, and he carried 'em well—no wrinkles at the peak or sag along the boom. His figurehead was more'n average regular, and his hair was combed real nice—the part in the middle of it looked like it had been laid out with a plumb-line. Also, he had on white shoes and glory hallelujah stockings. Altogether, he was alone with the price of admission, and what some folks, ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... de passe [Fr.], mot du guet [Fr.]; pass-parole; shibboleth. title, heading, docket. address card, visiting card; carte de visite [Fr.]. insignia; banner, banneret^, bannerol^; bandrol^; flag, colors, streamer, standard, eagle, labarum^, oriflamb^, oriflamme; figurehead; ensign; pennon, pennant, pendant; burgee^, blue Peter, jack, ancient, gonfalon, union jack; banderole, old glory [U.S.], quarantine flag; vexillum^; yellow-flag, yellow jack; tricolor, stars and stripes; bunting. heraldry, crest; coat of arms, arms; armorial ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other a Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and one of them—the elder, too, with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figurehead of an old ship might be—struck up a sturdy song that was ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... madam," said the clerk, motioning her round the back of the jury box. And she swept ponderously into the offing like a full-rigged bark and came to anchor in the witness chair, her chin rising and falling upon her heaving bosom like the figurehead of a vessel upon ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... cook, as black as midnight and as inscrutable as a figurehead, who brought us to our senses. Silently observing all that had happened, he had stood by the galley, without lifting his hand or changing the expression of a single feature; but now, taking his pipe from his mouth, he roared, "Man ovehboa'd!" Then, snatching up the carpenter's ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... ship was now scarce sixty yards distant: she seemed to know: she reared her lofty figurehead with great awful shoots ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... a figurehead in The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). The change of title is significant. The two previous works have been romances, but it is now Mrs. Radcliffe's intention to let herself go further in the direction of wonder and suspense than she had hitherto ventured. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

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

... and curving upwards to high peaks at stem and stern, both of which converged to sharp edges. It resembled an enormous canoe rather than aught else to which we can compare it. On the stem was a carved and gilt dragon, the figurehead of the ship, which glittered in the bright rays of the sun. Along the bulwarks of the ship, fore and aft, hung rows of large painted wooden shields, which gave an Argus-eyed aspect to the craft. Between ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... for his own moorings, and had been keeping a bright look-out, when suddenly he had been brought up all standing, and he thought he must have run bows on into some other craft, for he remembered no more than getting a crack over his figurehead. Morning was treading on the heels of night before Hislop and Wallace had got the damaged man home and had left him safely stowed in bed, and themselves were peacefully ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... in truth, for Frank's suggestion. The old schooner whose name they now discerned in faded gilt as "Molly M," seemed like a ghost of other days. Her outthrust bow, her up-cocked stern and the figurehead of a simpering woman that might have been mermaid originally but was now so worn as to make it almost impossible to tell the original intent, was, indeed, suggestive of galleons of ancient days. This figurehead jutted out ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge

... Koerner superintended the training of the men, gave instruction in tactics to the officers, caused maps to be prepared, and in general took every precaution that his experience could suggest to ensure success. Del Canto was himself no mere figurehead, but a thoroughly capable leader who had distinguished himself at Tacna (1880) and Miraflores (1881), as well as in the present war. The men were enthusiastic, and the officers unusually numerous. The ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... bitterest part of it was that, looking back on it now, getting it from the viewpoint of one stepping from it, he could see just how true was the statement: "Harvey Francis has been the real Governor of the State; John Morrison his mouthpiece and figurehead." ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell

... there, and your sofa by them. A clerk over there: it would be a sort of companion. You've plenty of capital to start with, and wouldn't have to lose your head at the first wrong deal. Of course you'd want someone the other end, a figurehead and mouthpiece, and someone to show you the lines, start you off; I'd be pleased to do it. We could make a partnership concern of it, if ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... straight as an arrow—no leeway—I made all sail to sheer alongside of her, and, when under quarter, examined her close. Never saw such a fine swell in the counter, and all so trim—no ropes towing overboard. Well, Mr Simple, I said to myself, 'D—n it, if her figurehead and bows be finished off by the same builder, she's perfect.' So I shot ahead, and yawed a little—caught a peep at her through her veil, and saw two black eyes—as bright as beads, and as large as damsons. I saw quite enough, and not ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... incredible than the alternative—that he was the real duke, who had been smuggled out of the Tower eight years before he was produced, and kept in concealment all through the interval, even while the Yorkist leaders had been reduced to setting up a supposititious Earl of Warwick for a figurehead. ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... said Uncle Teddy, with a twinkle in his eye. "If there's a Mrs. Jason on board Jason himself won't have a word to say about the expedition. He'll be nothing but a figurehead. He'll be the ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... be remembered. Ursula complained that he left her nothing to do save attend dreary committee meetings; and even for these Paul saved her all the trouble in hunting up information. She was a mere figurehead. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... four years I have lived ten. To-day I feel so very old! I am weary of being a king. I am weary of being weary, and for such there is no remedy. Truly I was not cut from the pattern of kings; no, no. I am handier with a book than with a scepter; I'd liever be a man than a puppet, and a puppet I am—a figurehead on the prow of the ship, but I do not guide it. Who care for me save those who have their ends to gain? None, save the archbishop, who yet dreams of making a king of me. And these are not my people who surround me; when I die, small ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... recently deplored the want of vitality in the old religions of the country, and, regarding their reformation as hopeless, openly advocated the adoption of Christianity. To be independent of the foreigner it must, he said, be made a state church, with one of the princes for a figurehead, if ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... Fathers, true to the teachings of their forefathers, sailed for the New World with the image of St. Nicholas for a figurehead on their vessel. They named the first church they built for the much-loved St. Nicholas and made him patron saint of the new city on Manhattan Island. Thanks, many many thanks, to these sturdy old Dutchmen with ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann

... a mile off, and, despite the intense calmness of the sea, was pitching and tossing as if in the roughest water. As she drew nearer I was able to make her out better, and from her build—she carried two masts and was square-rigged forward and schooner-rigged aft—as well as from her tawdry gilt figurehead, concluded she was a hermaphrodite brig of, very possibly, Dutch nationality. She had evidently seen a great deal of rough weather, for her foretopmast and part of her starboard bulwarks were gone, and what added to my astonishment and filled me with fears and doubts was, that in spite ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... lengthwise, either between the ribs and the skin or over the ribs, so as to protect the bark bottom from being injured by the cargo. The ends of the canoe are reinforced inside by the Indian equivalent for a collision bulkhead. This bulkhead sometimes rises well above the gunwale and is carved like a figurehead, which accounts for its voyageur name of le p'ti' bonhomme. A third finishing touch, {23} very common in earlier days, is the decoration of the outsides of both ends, which used to rise with a sharp sheer, and sometimes ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... Gibson, starts this so-called clean-up campaign to get Gibson political power, stages or directs this 'Lark' wreck business and figures I'll quit so that Gibson can slip in here under the guise of a reformer, but really a figurehead, a puppet, to appease the churches and other organizations standing for a clean city and law enforcement while the 'Gink' bosses things ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... peering across the blaze, "And who be you? Stand and give a show o' your figurehead!" Obediently I stood with hands outspread to the flame, warming my shivering body at ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... he had red hair, they cut off his head and smoke-dried it, instead of eating it with the rest of the body; they kept it as an ornament for the stem of a big canoe. A white man's head is a great thing at any time for a canoe's figurehead in the Solomons, but a white man's head with red hair is ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke

... Pascual Reyes, has arrived here from Cebu, and says that in Leyte General Lucban is committing many abuses and that Colonel Mojica is only a mere figurehead. In Cebu, he says, things are also in a chaotic condition, because the military chief, Magsilum [Maxilom,—TR.], and the people ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... the monarchy and national unity; and after Canute's empire had fallen to pieces under his worthless sons, the restoration of Ecgberht's line in the person of Edward the Confessor merely provided a figurehead under whose nominal rule the great earls of Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria, and East Anglia fought at first for control of the monarchy and at length for the crown itself. The strife resolved itself into a faction fight between the Mercian house of Leofric and the ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... government,' but no one knew precisely what was meant by it. Who was to be 'responsible'? for what? and to whom? How was it possible to make the local government 'responsible' to the people of the colony without reducing the governor to a figurehead? If his authority were reduced to a shadow, what became of the 'prerogative' and British connection? Was not 'responsible government' simply the prelude to the absolute separation of the colony from the mother country? Then there was the question of the Clergy Reserves agitating ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan

... by a row of supermarionettes. There is a myth among socialists to which all are expected to subscribe, that initiative springs anonymously out of the mass of the people,—that there are no "leaders," that the conspicuous figures are no more influential than the figurehead on the ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... heeded, but got up and sighed at the interruption; then patiently persisted. It took her two hours to examine thus, in detail, one half the island. But at last she discovered something. She saw at the eastern side of the reef a wooden figure of a woman, and, making her way to it, found the figurehead and a piece of the bow of the ship, with a sail on it, and a yard on that. This fragment was wedged into an angle of the reef, and the seaward edge of it shattered in a way that struck terror to Helen, for it showed her how omnipotent the sea had been. On the reef itself she found a cask with ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... place, the very worst I ever saw. These Cupids must have been erected in the time of the Dutch dynasty, as I judge from the immense posterior developments. Indeed the arts of the country are very low. The statues here, and the lions before the Prince of Orange's palace, would disgrace almost the figurehead of ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray

... with a face set as the figurehead on one of his own ships, the captain went to answer the knock. They heard the door open, and then ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... name her for me, and I am to be the figurehead; come to the carver's shop and see me," said Berinthia with sparkling eyes ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... general court affirming their right to do certain things which England, they knew, would be indisposed to permit. In brief, they claimed religious and civil independence, the latter in all but name, and left the king to be a figurehead without perquisites or power. They followed this intrepid statement by solemnly proclaiming Charles in Boston, and threw a sop to Cerberus in the shape of a letter couched in conciliating terms, feigning to believe that their attitude would win his approbation. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... he, like so many other presidents of railways, of individual corporations, of banks, of insurance companies, and high political officials in cities, states and the nation, was little more than a figurehead put up and used by the inside financial ring. As he shifted from leg to leg, holding his hat and trying to steady his twitching upper lip, he looked as one of his smallest section-bosses would have looked, if called up ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... "George M. Pullman has ever been deemed the dominant factor in that vast and profitable enterprise." This belief was declared an error, and the writer went on: "Field is, and for years has been, in almost absolute control. Pullman was little more than a figurehead. Such men as Robert T. Lincoln, the president of the company, and Norman B. Ream are but representatives of Marshall Field, whose name has never been identified with the property he so largely owns and controls." That fulsome writer, with the usual inaccuracies and turgid exaggerations ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... upon the future. As the typical instance of a convenient convention that I am inclined to think is now reacting very badly upon our future, the Crown of the British Empire, considered as the symbolical figurehead of a system of hereditary privilege and rule, serves extremely well. One may deal with this typical instance with no special application to the easy, kindly, amiable personality this crown adorns at the present time. It is a question that may be dealt with in general terms. What, we would ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... carvers and painters. The outsides of the houses, wherever there is a plank, are covered with rude yet characteristic figures. The high-peaked prows of their boats are ornamented with masses of open filagree work, cut out of solid blocks of wood, and often of very tasteful design, As a figurehead, or pinnacle, there is often a human figure, with a head of cassowary feathers to imitate the Papuan "mop." The floats of their fishing-lines, the wooden beaters used in tempering the clay for their ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... that ship. Maybe he can't do as much for the Galaxy in the long run as Mayhem can, but don't you see, man, he's a figurehead. Right now he's the most important man in the Galaxy, and if we could talk to him I'm sure Mayhem would agree. Mayhem would ...
— A Place in the Sun • C.H. Thames

... "He's a queer customer. Been quite a figurehead in Chinatown for twenty years. Say, Joe, heap bad!" and with the back of his hand he flicked ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... merely a figurehead, I understand. He's in New York now, working with us, as I shall tell you presently. If there is any one else besides Brown in it, it might be Michael Dawson, the nominal assistant but really the active treasurer. There you have another man whom we suspect, and, strangely ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... if she was human. He scolds and coaxes her and this morning he promised to paint and gild her figurehead, if she got into Kirkwall before three. Then every sailor on board helped her and the wind changed a point or two and that helped her, and now and then Farquar pushed her on, with a good or bad word, and she saved herself ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... help from me. They are working quite as well now in my absence as they did in my presence. St. Timothy's is a great, strong society of the rich, and the man they engage to preach to them on Sundays has mighty little to do that any figurehead couldn't do as well. Down here—well, there is something to do which won't get done unless I do it. And if this neighbourhood, or any other similar one, needs me, there's no question that still more ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond

... criminals, as he was supposed to. I think this is highly probable, though I cannot vouch for the truth of the assertion, it being only hearsay. He was replaced by a fat and rather harmless dug-out captain, who proved to be only a pompous figurehead. The camp was entirely run by the second in command, Lieutenant Wolfe. In England persons of this type are so rarely met with that our language does not contain the necessary words to describe them adequately. In Germany they are comparatively common, ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight

... good and as nourishing as could be; I'd know that guests would be well cared for and that bills would be paid. Isn't a woman, the mistress of a house, supposed to do more than that? I don't want to be a mere figurehead." ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris



Words linked to "Figurehead" :   strawman, cheater, cheat, slicker, straw man, beguiler, figure, trickster, deceiver, front man



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