Word.ws English Dictionary

fig leaves

fig leaves is the plural of fig leaf.

Meaning of fig leaf

Noun

fig leaf (plural fig leaves)

  1. A leaf of the fig plant.
  2. A representation of leaf of a fig plant used to cover the genitals of a nude figure in a work of art (alluding to Genesis iii 7, in which Adam and Eve use fig leaves to hide their nakedness).
    • This figleaf morality expresses a very unhealthy mental attitude.1965, Attila Zohar, Kings Cross Black Magic, Sydney: Horwitz Publications, page 107
  3. (figuratively) Anything used to conceal something undesirable or that one does not want to be discovered.
    • True, David Brog, one of the organizers of last week’s conference, insisted that national conservatives are not anti-immigrant. But this is a fig leaf. [University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy] Wax explicitly made an argument for limiting the number of nonwhites entering the US.2019 July 24, David Austin Walsh, “Flirting With Fascism”, in Jewish Currents

Questions about fig leaves

What is fig leaves the plural of?
Fig leaves is the plural of fig leaf.

Words near fig leaves in the dictionary

  1. fig
  2. Fig Garden
  3. fig insect
  4. fig insects
  5. fig leaf
  6. fig leaves
  7. fig marigold
  8. fig marigolds
  9. fig out
  10. fig parrot
  11. fig parrots

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fig leaves (page history and authors); fig leaf (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “fig leaves.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fig_leaves. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.