Fig Leaf

A fig leaf (the large leaf of a fig tree) is used in English as a figurative expression for some insubstantial and ineffective attempt to hide something. The image is drawn from the biblical story of the Fall of Man, where, when Adam and Eve have eaten the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, their first knowledge is that "they were naked" - the arrival of sexual inhibition in the world. Their response was "they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons."

Here a fig leaf covers nakedness, not very effectively (later God made them "coats of skins"). In modern usage, it refers to any 'cover-up', or flimsy attempt to conceal an embarrassing or awkward truth.

In artworks, you will sometimes see fig leaves placed to cover the genitals of nudes. Quite often these are figurative 'fig leaves', such as the corner of a bedsheet or a wisp of long hair.

OED cites Charles Kingsley's novel Alton Locke (1850): "They tore off even the fig-leaves of decent reticence" (I. xx. 282).