Word.ws English Dictionary

cover-up

/ˈkʌvɚˌʌp/

cover-up noun: an attempt to conceal or disguise something, especially a wrongdoing or a mistake.

Noun

cover-up (plural cover-ups)

  1. An attempt to conceal or disguise something, especially a wrongdoing or a mistake.
    • Truthfulness means no lies and no cover-ups. Compassion means being kind and helpful to others. Forbearance means being able to tolerate and suffer, and not fight back.
    • [War metaphors] are used, either consciously or unconsciously, for specific effect and purpose. They are used, not so much as descriptions, but rather to convey additional moral, imaginative or judgmental information. The ubiquitous "war between the sexes" is, in fact, a cover-up of the fact that...1991 February 4, Michael Bronski, “Are We Having A War, Or What?”, in Gay Community News, volume 18, number 28, page 9
  2. An item of clothing to be worn over a swimsuit while not in the water.
    • The women usually wore bikini tops with shorts, swimsuits underneath cover-ups or just swimsuits. Men came in various types of trunks, from traditional boxers, to Speedos, to G-string trunks that showcased their packages.2013, Velvet Carter, Blissfully Yours, page 93

cover-up meaning in Malayalam

cover-up in Malayalam

concealment, whitewash, false front
മൂടിവയ്ക്കൽ, ആവരണം ചെയ്യൽ, അപഹ്നവം, അപഹ്നുതി, ആകാരഗുപ്തി, വൃതി

Examples of cover-up in a sentence

  • The ubiquitous "war between the sexes" is, in fact, a cover-up of the fact that men, generally, have social power over women.1991 February 4, Michael Bronski, “Are We Having A War, Or What?”, in Gay Community News, volume 18, number 28, page 9:
  • It makes no lasting sense to retain this as a permanent status quo, using Mary as a cover-up for defective notions of the divine.2000 June 17, Elizabeth A. Johnson, “Mary of Nazareth: Friend of God and Prophet”, in America, volume 182, number 21:
  • Many supporters believed Donald Trump would finally expose government cover-ups once he returned to power.2025 July 10, Jesus Mesa, “'We've Been Played': MAGA Faces Its Own Disappointment With Trump”, in Newsweek:

Forms of cover-up

pluralcover-ups
alternative formcoverup

Origin of cover-up

Deverbal from cover up.

Questions about cover-up

What does cover-up mean?
Cover-up means an attempt to conceal or disguise something, especially a wrongdoing or a mistake.
What is cover-up in Malayalam?
Cover-up in Malayalam is മൂടിവയ്ക്കൽ, ആവരണം ചെയ്യൽ, അപഹ്നവം. See Cover-up meaning in Malayalam.
How do you use cover-up in a sentence?
The ubiquitous "war between the sexes" is, in fact, a cover-up of the fact that men, generally, have social power over women.
What part of speech is cover-up?
Cover-up is a noun.
How do you pronounce cover-up?
Cover-up is pronounced /ˈkʌvɚˌʌp/ (US).
What is the plural of cover-up?
The plural of cover-up is cover-ups.

Words near cover-up in the dictionary

  1. cover-shames
  2. cover-slut
  3. cover-sluts
  4. cover-the-buckle
  5. cover-the-buckles
  6. cover-up
  7. cover-ups
  8. coverability
  9. coverable
  10. Coverack
  11. coverage

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cover-up (page history and authors); cover-up (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-cover-up.wav.

Cite this entry: “cover-up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cover-up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.