The phrase "ostensible function" is correct and commonly used in written English.
It refers to the apparent or outward purpose of something, which may not necessarily be its true or underlying purpose. Example: The ostensible function of the new company policy was to increase productivity, but it was really meant to cut costs.
The ostensible function of the unit was to publicise the achievements of the state-run communications industry.
The ostensible function of the Moscow desk was straightforward: it bought and sold stock for approved corporate clients — mutual funds, brokerages, hedge funds, and the like.
But the risk is that it will be something of a hybrid: a throwback to the 19th century in its presence and ostensible function, a representative of the 20th in its requirements for clarity and demotic variability, and a harbinger of the 21st in that it will be so malleable that it will hardly matter when it finally gives way before yet another incarnation.
Precisely because their ostensible function is so easily determined, there has long been an assumption that cookbooks (and recipes generally) must contain all manner of hidden agendas, which can only be unearthed by those who possess the right code-breaking tools.
Quantifying such entertainment events for our listening and scorekeeping pleasure was once the ostensible function of a show like "American Top 40," long ago, when Casey Kasem, in tones of relaxed certainty, led listeners through a list of what was popular, as determined by experts on these matters, from "coast to coast".
Beneath musical.ly's ostensible function as a place where young people amuse themselves making videos for their friends, the app poses an eye-opening, potentially industry-disrupting question: Why try to promote your music all on your own when you can get fans to promote your work for you?
Each of the show's 60 miniature sculptures, dating from the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), is a nugget of show-off virtuosity and doesn't pretend to be much else, though at least a few have ostensible functions.
The ostensible purpose was to preserve our homegrown classics.
At times, he seemed distracted from his ostensible purpose.
The ostensible purpose of these NOCs is the development and promotion of the Olympic movement.
Its ostensible purpose was to eliminate Palestinian strongholds in southern Lebanon.
