English▸ noun [mass noun] US English informal (in professional wrestling) the fact or convention of presenting staged performances as genuine or authentic:
a masterful job of blending kayfabe and reality
he's not someone who can break kayfabe and talk about the business
[as modifier] I heard that AJ approached him to rehearse a kayfabe segment.
– ORIGIN 1980s: origin uncertain; often said to have arisen in American travelling carnivals. One explanation interprets the word as an alteration of ‘be fake’ written backwards, while the -ay- element is typical of the way in which words are formed in pig Latin.