A veneer is a very thin layer of good material glued over cheaper material underneath. Furniture is the usual case: a table might be cheap board inside with a thin sheet of beautiful walnut on the outside. If a table is made that way, it is 'veneered' — 'a veneered desk', 'the top is veneered in oak'. So 'veneered' tells you two things at once: the surface is nice, and the nice part is only skin-deep. Because of that, the word carries a faint judgement. It is not an insult — veneered furniture is normal and can be lovely, and veneer lets you use rare woods without cutting down whole trees — but if someone says 'it's only veneered', they mean it is not solid wood, so it is worth less. Teeth work the same way: dentists put thin covers called veneers on the front of teeth to make them white and even. The word also has a figurative life, and this is where you will meet it in reading. A 'veneer of' something means a thin appearance covering a different truth underneath: 'a veneer of politeness', 'a thin veneer of civilisation'. Here it is almost always negative — the writer is telling you not to trust the surface. The verb form appears too: 'his anger was veneered with a smile'. That use is literary; the everyday use is furniture.

貼皮的；鑲面的(家具的薄木皮；引申指「表面工夫」、只有一層漂亮外皮)