Word.ws English Dictionary

papered over

papered over is the simple past and past participle of paper over.

Meaning of paper over

Verb

paper over (third-person singular simple present papers over, present participle papering over, simple past and past participle papered over)

  1. (figuratively, transitive) To superficially hide or disguise (a problem or a defect) without addressing it; to provide a veneer of normality or success.
    • Runaway lending continues, bad debts mount even higher, and the need for more cash to paper over losses becomes that much more acute.2014, Patric Chovanec, at Bloomberg, China's Runaway Train is Running Out of Track

Questions about papered over

What is papered over the simple past and past participle of?
Papered over is the simple past and past participle of paper over.

Words near papered over in the dictionary

  1. papercrete
  2. papercut
  3. papercuts
  4. papercutting
  5. papered
  6. papered over
  7. papered the house
  8. paperer
  9. paperers
  10. paperflower
  11. paperflowers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: papered over (page history and authors); paper over (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.

Last updated:

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