Potemkin village
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of Potemkin village
1935–40; after Prince Potëmkin ( def. ), who allegedly had villages of cardboard constructed for Catherine II's visit to the Ukraine and the Crimea in 1787
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It’s possible this has left him thinking the world’s bad guys are a Potemkin village, that they talk big but fold quickly.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 5, 2026
They are the world’s most expensive decorations — a clean-energy Potemkin village stretched across the provinces.
From MarketWatch • Jan. 21, 2026
It was like the climactic scene in “Blazing Saddle,” when incompetent villain Hedley Lamarr tried to invade a small town with the baddest of hombres besides him only to find a Potemkin village.
From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 8, 2025
The town has been compared to a Potemkin village, to Brigadoon, to a “feudal Disneyland” and to the town in the movie “The Truman Show.”
From New York Times • Apr. 20, 2023
The French have responded by cracking down on Uber and setting up a Potemkin village retraining system whereby the unemployed work for fake companies at fake jobs.
From Washington Post • Jul. 27, 2015
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
