Sample Sentences for
figurehead
grouped by contextual meaning
(editor-reviewed)

figurehead as in:  figurehead at the bow

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"Well," August said, going right on with her pasting, "you know, she's really just the figurehead off an old ship, but the people needed comfort and rescue, so when they looked at it, they saw Mary, and so the spirit of Mary took it over."  (source)
figurehead = a decorative statue at the front of a ship
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    When the forklift driver had the crate secured, Owen hopped on one of the tines of the fork— he rode thus, the short distance across the runway to the waiting hearse, like the figurehead on the prow of a ship.  (source)
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    On the street: multicolored neon angels, in silhouette, leaning out from the tops of the buildings like ship figureheads.  (source)
    figureheads = decorative statues at the front of ships
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    One moment he was the captain of his own pirate ship—a happy place, crewed by obedient eleven-year-olds, except for the girls, who were all a year or two older than Nick and who looked especially pretty in their pirate costumes—and the next he was alone on the deck, and a huge, dark ship the size of an oil tanker, with ragged black sails and a skull for a figurehead, was crashing through the storm towards him.  (source)
    figurehead = carved figure at the front of a ship
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    She was sitting up in the bow, like a figurehead.  (source)
    figurehead = a decorative statue at the front of a ship
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    Always she waited, her eyes straining to make out the figure on the prow, and always, at the sight of those strange, glistening white figureheads, her heart sank.†  (source)
    figureheads = statues at the front of ships
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figurehead as in:  she is just a figurehead

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Is she a real leader or a figurehead?
figurehead = a person who appears to be the leader of an organization, but who really has no power
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    Anyway, I revived him as a figurehead.  (source)
    figurehead = a person who appears to be the leader of an organization, but who really has little power
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    He's a figurehead.  (source)
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    Don Apolinar Moscote, the benevolent ruler whose activity had been reduced to the maintenance from his scanty resources of two policemen armed with wooden clubs, was a figurehead.  (source)
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    I was annoyed at both him and Blackie — at my company commander because I resented being put to sleep against my wishes; and as for my platoon sergeant, I had a dirty hunch that it wouldn't have been done if he weren't the real boss and myself just a figurehead.  (source)
    figurehead = a person who appears to be the leader of an organization, but who really has little power
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    The transparent elected have been used as figureheads, shielding the backroom from view.  (source)
    figureheads = people who appear to be leaders of an organization, but who really have little power
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    He's smart enough to be president, but he says he has no interest in being a figurehead.  (source)
    figurehead = a person who appears to be the leader of an organization, but who really has little power
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    I found a number of odd economic bedfellows who I think may be using Canadian figureheads to buy up Canadian properties.†  (source)
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    The President in particular is very much a figurehead—he wields no real power whatsoever.†  (source)
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    Soldiers broke into his house, ransacked his snail collection, his shells, his butterflies, his bottles, the ship figureheads he had rescued from so many seas, his books, his paintings, and his unfinished poems, looking for subversive weapons and hidden Communists, until his old poet's heart began to falter.†  (source)
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    She looked beautiful, fierce, leaning forward like a figurehead.†  (source)
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    For indeed, we are nothing but figureheads to complex forces which seem to be under a kind of impulse.†  (source)
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    Nat and the redheaded seaman who had painted the Dolphin's figurehead that morning on the river were cheerfully exchanging insults with a cluster of young bound boys who had stopped to enjoy the spectacle, the two culprits holding their own in an unchastened manner that delighted the onlookers.†  (source)
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    Aristocracy and plutocracy still furnish the figureheads of politics; but they are now dependent on the votes of the promiscuously bred masses.†  (source)
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