Meaning & use
sugar-coating
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Meanings
noununcountable
The act of making bad news or an unpleasant truth sound gentler or less serious than it really is.
Grammar: Used as an uncountable noun: you say 'some sugar-coating' or 'no sugar-coating', not 'a sugar-coating'.
Patterns
- sugar-coating of something
- without any sugar-coating
- no sugar-coating
The report gave the facts without any sugar-coating.
His sugar-coating of the company's losses fooled nobody for long.
I want the truth, and I want it with no sugar-coating.
verbtransitive
Present participle of sugar-coat: making something unpleasant seem nicer or easier to accept.
Grammar: Part of a verb phrase and takes an object: 'She is sugar-coating the news' — never 'she is sugar-coating' alone in this sense.
Patterns
- be sugar-coating something
- keep sugar-coating something
You're sugar-coating the problem instead of fixing it.
He kept sugar-coating his answers, so we still don't know what happened.
Common combinations
- without sugar-coating
- She told us about the job cuts without sugar-coating.
- sugar-coating of the truth
- The sugar-coating of the truth made the staff feel misled.
- no sugar-coating
- Give me the figures with no sugar-coating.
- a lot of sugar-coating
- There was a lot of sugar-coating in the manager's speech.
- sugar-coating the facts
- Stop sugar-coating the facts and tell me what really went wrong.
Synonyms and how they differ
- softening
- Neutral and general; it can describe making anything gentler, while sugar-coating usually suggests hiding how bad something is.
- euphemism
- A noun for a mild word used instead of a harsh one; sugar-coating is the wider habit of making bad news sound pleasant.
- whitewashing
- Stronger and more disapproving — it suggests deliberately covering up wrongdoing, not just being kind.
Opposites
Word family
- sugar-coat verb
- To make bad news or an unpleasant fact seem less harsh.
- sugar-coated adjective
- Describing words or news that have been made to sound nicer than they are.
Commonly confused: sugar-coating or sugar coating?
sugar-coating vs sugar coating
Written as two words, this usually means a real layer of sugar on food, as on candy or pills; the figurative idea is normally written with a hyphen.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'sugar-coating' correctly?
Choose one answer.
'He is sugar-coating the bad news' uses the verb sugar-coat correctly in the present continuous with an object. Option An is a literal sweet layer, not this figurative sense; option C is missing 'is' before the -ing form; option D invents a meaning about roads.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “sugar-coating”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.