paper over

British

verb

(tr, adverb) to conceal (something controversial or unpleasant)

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

paper over Idioms

Also, paper over the cracks. Repair superficially, conceal, especially flaws. For example, He used some accounting gimmicks to paper over a deficit, or It was hardly a perfect settlement, but they decided to paper over the cracks. The German statesman Otto von Bismarck first used this analogy in a letter in 1865, and the first recorded example in English, in 1910, referred to it. The allusion is to covering cracked plaster with wallpaper, thereby improving its appearance but not the underlying defect.

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

That extends a rally in bonds that has clipped more than 30 basis points, or hundredths of a percentage point, from the yield on the benchmark paper over the past month.

From Barron's

A side aware of their cracks but unable to paper over them, never mind fix them.

From BBC

About ten young women sit at desks, their pencils flying over documents, their hands sliding colored slips of paper over giant tables of letters.

From Literature

But there were only so many problems that talent could paper over for the Trojans, even if Northwestern had come into Wednesday night on the heels of a five-game losing streak.

From Los Angeles Times

He should have gotten A plus, but Miss Kemp made him do the whole paper over.

From Literature

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023