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Reader question: Please explain “true colors”, as in this sentence: Alec, who aspires to political life, has just shown his true colors by changing his allegiance from Democrat to Republican. My comments: Alec used to support the Democrat Party. Now, he says he is going to support the Republicans instead. By doing that, he’s revealing his real political leanings and intentions. Obviously, he hid his true feelings about politics from his friends. In a way, he cheated them. His friends had perhaps always thought of Alec as a simple, straightforward, honest young man. After this, they may want to think again. Now that they’ve seen his true colors, that is, his true political inclinations and perhaps his true character in general. They got him wrong all along. If he wants to be a politician, perhaps his friends should learn to treat him as such, i.e. a tricky and shifty politician. “True colors”, you see, is an American idiom that originates from battleships sometimes flying fake flags in order to deceive the enemy. When a single American ship met a number of Japanese ships during the World War II, for example, it might have chosen to fly a German flag in order to avoid a confrontation. Nazi Germany and Japan were allies then. Phrases.com explains: It has been prevalent since many centuries those ships had different colorful flags as a sign of their identity. But it so happened sometimes that a ship could fly a false or fake flag to fool its enemy. This thing was expressed as sailing “under false colors”. If the deceitful ship came into view by flying its real flags it meant it “showed its true colors”. | 
