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paper over
verb
- tr, adverb to conceal (something controversial or unpleasant)
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Idioms and Phrases
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.Advertisement
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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