Word.ws English Dictionary

Potemkin villages

Potemkin villages is the plural of Potemkin village.

Meaning of Potemkin village

Noun

Potemkin village (plural Potemkin villages)

  1. (idiomatic) Any false construct devised to disguise a shortcoming or improve appearances.
    • Such concentration not only simplifies the task of keeping tabs on foreigners' movements, but it also enables the Government to influence the outside world's picture of Russia by arranging matters in Moscow to make it a sort of huge, latter-day Potemkin Village.1949 April 3, Harry Schwartz, “Soviet Capital Likened to a Potemkin Village”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, page E4

Questions about Potemkin villages

What is Potemkin villages the plural of?
Potemkin villages is the plural of Potemkin village.

Words near Potemkin villages in the dictionary

  1. Poteetes
  2. Poteets
  3. potelot
  4. Potemkin
  5. Potemkin village
  6. Potemkin villages
  7. Potemkinian
  8. Potempa
  9. Potempas
  10. potence
  11. potences

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Potemkin villages (page history and authors); Potemkin village (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: “Potemkin villages.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/potemkin_villages. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.