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maintain appearances

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Verb

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maintain appearances (third-person singular simple present maintains appearances, present participle maintaining appearances, simple past and past participle maintained appearances)

  1. Synonym of keep up appearances
    • April 14 2022, Delia Cai, “Severance, the New York Times’s Twitter Guidelines, and the Forever Illusion of Work-Life Balance”, in Vanity Fair[1]:
      Under the guise of being “online” and capable of disseminating news instantaneously (known colloquially as “retweeting”), being active on Twitter, for media workers, gives the effect of fulfilling one’s occupational duty as well as all the parts of professional upkeep that, in the physical world, involve being in the right rooms, overhearing the right things, and more or less maintaining appearances.