show one's true colors
verbEtymology
Nautical origin. The word colors (or colours) refers to the flag or ensign which every ship is obliged to fly at sea. It was once a common deception of pirates to “sail under false colours” and fly a friendly flag in order to get within close range of potential targets (other ships) without exciting suspicion. Only when the pirate ship reached close quarters would it unfurl its true colours.
Definitions
To reveal how one really is, as opposed to how one has been portrayed or after having…
To reveal how one really is, as opposed to how one has been portrayed or after having been deceptively and deliberately misleading.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for show one's true colors. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA