keep up appearances
to pretend to be happier, less poor, etc. than you really are, because you do not want people to know how bad your situation is:
They were very unhappily married but kept up appearances for the sake of their children.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Faking & pretending
- a wolf in sheep's clothing idiom
- affect
- assume
- believe
- bluff
- changeling
- charlatan
- falsify
- feign
- fraud
- go through the motions idiom
- guise
- play at sth
- play possum idiom
- play sth out
- play-acting
- pose as sb
- professed
- purport
- quack
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