paper over

verb

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

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.

Example Sentences

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

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

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These messages could only be revealed by letting the milk dry and holding the paper over a candle flame, whose heat soon made the milk turn dark enough to read.

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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.

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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.

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