paper over

British  

verb

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

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paper over Idioms  

1. 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.

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Example Sentences

Toner-Rodgers continued to work on the paper over the summer.

From The Wall Street Journal

It’s not like those good manners and contrived niceties ever managed to paper over those divisions in the first place.

From Slate

Australia's tortuous search to replace swashbuckling opener David Warner is over with Jake Weatherald set to pad up in the first Ashes Test, but the selection can't paper over the ageing side's glaring weakness at the top of the order.

From Barron's

Vilifying Japan is a handy way to rile the Chinese public and paper over the challenges that ordinary people face, said Friso Stevens, a Fulbright scholar at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies in the Netherlands.

From The Wall Street Journal

And I agree with Coates when he criticized Klein for whitewashing Charlie Kirk’s legacy, and agree that while we should not celebrate a person’s death, we also shouldn’t paper over who they were in life.

From Slate