smokescreen

• smoke screen, smoke-screen

From smoke + screen.

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈsmoʊkˌskɹin/

• Audio (US):

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smokescreen (plural smokescreens)

1. Smoke used as a disguise, mask or cover, as of troops in battle.
   • 1951, Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny‎^[1], Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Chapter 25, Part 5, p. 284:

     Ensign Whitely began to tell of the surprise encounter of Admiral Sprague’s escort-carrier force with the main battle line of the Japanese Navy off Samar, in a chaos of rain squalls and smoke screens.

   • 1959 September, “Talking of Trains”, in Trains Illustrated, page 401, photo caption:

     C.I.E. Class "D14" 4-4-0 No. 89 covers its tracks with a magnificent smokescreen as it pulls out of Dun Laoghaire with the 9.0 a.m. boat train for Dublin.

   • 2017 August 9, Mark Carnall, “Why do cephalopods produce ink? And what's ink made of, anyway?”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     However, before most of this was experimentally and observationally discovered, they were perhaps best known for their “almost unique” ability to squirt ink when harangued, creating a smokescreen before jetting off to safety.

2. (figuratively) Anything used metaphorically to conceal or distract.

   All that talk is just a smokescreen to disguise the fact that he has nothing to say.

   • 1968, Desmond Bagley, chapter 8, in The Vivero Letter‎^[3], Garden City, NY: Doubleday, page 163:

     It was all very plausible and, as he poured out his smokescreen of words, I became fidgety for fear Fallon would be too direct with him.

• smokescreen on Wikipedia.Wikipedia