Word.ws English Dictionary

a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down

/ə ˈspuːnfəl əv ˈʃʊɡə(ɹ)ˌhɛlps ðə ˈmɛdɪsɪn ɡoʊ ˌdaʊn/

a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down proverb: an otherwise unpleasant situation can be pleasant when a pleasant aspect is deliberately introduced.

Proverb

a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down

  1. An otherwise unpleasant situation can be pleasant when a pleasant aspect is deliberately introduced.
    • One is known as the "sweetening parable," that is to say a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Thus, when the aim is to preach to the people, to guide them along the "bitter," arduous path of upholding burdensome precepts and prohibitions, a tale can lighten the load, make the "medicine"...1999, Eli Yassif, The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning, Indiana University Press, →ISBN, page 372
    • It put some fun into the tedious business of preparing for a presidential debate. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, right?2001, Maureen Reagan, First Father, First Daughter: A Memoir, Little, Brown, →ISBN, page 319

Forms of a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down

alternative forma spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down

Origin of a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down

From the Sherman Brothers' 1964 song "A Spoonful of Sugar".

Questions about a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down

What does a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down mean?
A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down means an otherwise unpleasant situation can be pleasant when a pleasant aspect is deliberately introduced.
What part of speech is a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down?
A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down is a proverb.
How do you pronounce a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down?
A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down is pronounced /ə ˈspuːnfəl əv ˈʃʊɡə(ɹ)ˌhɛlps ðə ˈmɛdɪsɪn ɡoʊ ˌdaʊn/.

Words near a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down in the dictionary

  1. a smidgeon
  2. a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor
  3. a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved
  4. A Special
  5. A Specials
  6. a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
  7. a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down
  8. A star
  9. A stars
  10. a stick in a bundle cannot be broken
  11. a stick in a bundle is unbreakable

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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