Potemkin village

noun

Po·​tem·​kin village pə-ˈtem(p)-kən- 

: an impressive facade or show designed to hide an undesirable fact or condition

Examples of Potemkin village in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder portray a married couple who build a Potemkin village of eco-friendly homes and pour-over coffee shops in a struggling New Mexico town. —Jennifer Wilson, The New Yorker, 10 Mar. 2025

But behind the Potemkin village, the Khmer Rouge regime is declining and the war with Vietnam threatens to invade the country. —Christian Zilko, IndieWire, 26 Nov. 2024

The resort reproduces an ancient Apulian town and farmhouse in a project that some locals have likened to a Mediterranean Potemkin village. —Emma Bubola, New York Times, 11 June 2024

The fake blood, the cars on rails, the Potemkin villages, not to mention the computer graphics, the herds and armies and tempests that exist only in code. —Nick Paumgarten, The New Yorker, 6 May 2024

Is the immaculate beauty of that metro station a Potemkin village glossing over the fear with which many Russians live? —Scott Simon, NPR, 23 Feb. 2024

Most of San Francisco will remain filthy, lawless and plagued with homeless encampments and drugs, and the Potemkin village will vanish after the summit. —WSJ, 17 Nov. 2023

But Horizons Worlds, which as of October reportedly had less than two hundred thousand users, is so far more like a virtual Potemkin village constructed to keep the boss happy. —Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker, 8 Dec. 2022

The $60 million headquarters, for one, was barely a Potemkin village. —Leo Schwartz, Fortune, 22 Nov. 2022

Word History

Etymology

Grigori Potëmkin, who supposedly built impressive fake villages along a route Catherine the Great was to travel

First Known Use

1904, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for Potemkin village

• millage
• pillage
• spillage