And as they read, little by little the cloak of respectability wore gradually thinner, the pretence of secrecy was dropped, the name of their master was discreetly avowed and quietly praised.
Source: H. R. Trevor-Roper: Niccolo Machiavelli. In Joseph Frank (ed.) Modern Essays in English, p. 24.
This is an excerpt from the text on N. Machiavelli. In the paragraph, from which I cites only this sentence, the author sets forth how Machiavelli was in the middle of the 16th century becoming an acceptable political thinker and how many famous individuls started reading him and thereby they legitimized his work. Given the context I have the problem with the metaphor "the cloak of respectability wore gradually thinner" which (if I understand it properly) asserts the opposite: increasing the inrespectability. But this seems to be against the sense of the context. What does exactly the mentioned metaphor mean?
Answer
A cloak is normally a loose fitting garment that is worn over the clothes and covers the whole body. From this idea comes a metaphorical meaning "something that hides, covers, or keeps something else secret".
a cloak of respectability is an idiomatic way of saying that somebody pretends to be respectable in order to conceal wrong behaviour.
The expression wear thin is another fabric-related idiom. If an item of clothing is worn regularly, the fabric gets progressively thinner: it becomes partially transparent, and so can no longer conceal what is underneath.
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