Meanings of mere decoration in English

I liked the church as a pretty pattern; discipline was mere decoration.

The very employment of the gods for mere decoration bears this stamp.

It seemed, like the rest, to possess no attribute other than mere decoration.

As usual they meant a lot more than a mere decoration.

Nor was the gladness all show, mere decoration.

All were moth-eaten, singed, bloodied, torn and faded, and now, with the passage of decades, reduced to mere decoration.

The effort for mere decoration, for pretentious show, is so evident that one wishes for an earthquake to swallow them all.

But today the elaborate manner in which she had done up her hair, in the English fashion, made it appear a mere decoration.

If we teach that there is nothing else below the bottom line, then ideas about sustainability, diversity, responsibility and so on become mere decoration.

And this is the reason why such poems strike us as creations, not manufactures, and have the magical effect which mere decoration cannot produce.

Most argumentative, didactic, or satiric poems are partly of this kind; and in imaginative poems anything which is really a mere "conceit" is mere decoration.

Avoid using on your walls as mere decorations articles such as rugs or priests' vestments primarily intended for other purposes.

"These things are not here for mere decoration's sake," it seemed to say.

The point is, rather, that Whale pushes his sequel so far into comedy and camp absurdity that the shocks become mere decorations.

"Something far better than mere decoration; however, is requisite to make society at all agreeable," continued Mr. Ellsworth.