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sugarcoat. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
sugarcoat, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
sugarcoat in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
sugarcoat you have here. The definition of the word
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English
Etymology
From sugar + coat; figurative sense from the practice of coating medicinal tablets or pills with sugar in order to disguise their unpleasant taste (sugarcoating the pill).
Pronunciation
Verb
sugarcoat (third-person singular simple present sugarcoats, present participle sugarcoating, simple past and past participle sugarcoated)
- (transitive) To coat with sugar.
- (transitive, figurative) To make superficially more attractive; to give a falsely pleasant appearance to.
- Synonyms: candy-coat, gild, gild the pill, sugarcoat the pill
There's no way to sugarcoat the loss of the space shuttle; it was an unmitigated disaster.
1876 November 1, Mark Twain, “Letter to Mr. Burrough, of St. Louis”, in The Letters Of Mark Twain,, volume 3:I went to the unheard-of trouble of re-writing the letter and saying the same harsh things softly, so as to sugarcoat the anguish and make it a little more endurable […]
2022 March 23, Barack Obama, 2:52 from the start, in Centennial Celebration Conversation with President Barack Obama and Yo-Yo Ma, Chicago Council on Global Affairs, via YouTube:[…] And I don't think we can sugarcoat both the human toll that is unfolding in Ukraine, but also how it is reordering the international architecture in ways that we haven't seen in decades.
2023 October 12, HarryBlank, “Fire in the Hole”, in SCP Foundation, archived from the original on 2 September 2024:"The insurgents killed them all?"
"Very likely." Scout's expression was kindly, but he was apparently not the sort to sugarcoat things. Then again, maybe he had simply read her receptivity well.
Derived terms
Translations
to give a falsely pleasant appearance