ostensible
He shut down the office, ostensibly out of concern for his staff's safety.
Ostensibly, she had achieved all her primary objectives.
Kerry had been ostensibly phoning to offer advice, but he blurted out what was really on his mind.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Seeming and purporting to be
apparent
appear
appearance
as if/thoughidiom
by the look(s) of thingsidiom
come across
come off
formal
outwardly
outwardness
parallax
pass
pass for sb/sth
persona
semblance
superficial
superficiality
superficially
supposably
surface

Examples of ostensibly

ostensibly
The editors are to be congratulated for having succeeded in bringing together what are ostensibly ten very different studies into a well-integrated, coherent whole.
Regrettably, some anthropologists have begun to silence their own voices, ostensibly to create spaces for indigenous voices, but ultimately to everyone's detriment.
In this example, someone is behaving somewhat like the ostensibly blundering chess player.
This is not merely a matter of whether we take an ostensibly political stance toward language use; it relates to a range of analytic preferences.
The conservation significance of small-scale eco-forestry, therefore, is that groups ostensibly set aside 1,000 hectares of tropical lowland rainforest for the next 50 years.
Without such letters, soldiers lose their place in the social matrix that they are ostensibly fighting to maintain.
These twin objectives, whilst ostensibly aimed at the same thing - the achievement of order in economic life - were in fact in opposition to one another.
The selling of the goods provided income and ostensibly coincided with moral behaviour.
Ostensibly, budget caps allow for incremental program expansion but, unless expressly overridden, prohibit expenditures greater than anticipated.
The textual unfixity of his bodily injury insinuates its lingeringly irregular character, even though his body has ostensibly healed.
This formidable two-volume set concerned with the scientific foundations of die heart and vessels is, ostensibly, a second edition.
This formidable two-volume set concerned with the scientific foundations of the heart and vessels is, ostensibly, a second edition.
The world\\local price differential was ostensibly designated for market, product and producer development.
It was a somewhat quirky period-piece, being both ostensibly radical and a confidently psychologistic study.
Furthermore, a policy departure, ostensibly concerned with dealing with a local crisis involving children in two residential nurseries was going to have far wider implications.
See all examples of ostensibly
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