sugarcoat
Syllables: sug·ar·coat/ˈʃʊɡəˌkəʊt/US/ˈʃʊɡɚˌkoʊt/
sugarcoat verb: to coat with sugar.
Verb
sugarcoat (third-person singular simple present sugarcoats, present participle sugarcoating, simple past and past participle sugarcoated)
- To coat with sugar.
- To make superficially more attractive; to give a falsely pleasant appearance to.
- There's no way to sugarcoat the loss of the space shuttle; it was an unmitigated disaster.
- I went to the unheard-of trouble of re-writing the letter and saying the same harsh things softly, so as to sugarcoat the anguish and make it a little more endurable […]1876 November 1, Mark Twain, “Letter to Mr. Burrough, of St. Louis”, in The Letters Of Mark Twain,, volume 3
- Synonyms:
- candy-coat, gild, gild the pill, sugarcoat the pill
sugarcoat meaning in Arabic
sugarcoat in Arabic
- to coat with sugar
- غَطَّى بِالسُّكَّرِ ḡaṭṭā bias-sukkari
- to give a falsely pleasant appearance
- حَسَّنَ ḥassana, خَفَّفَ ḵaffafa, لَطَّفَ laṭṭafa, جَمَّل jammal
Examples of sugarcoat in a sentence
- The only difference is I got the balls to say it in front of y'all / And I don't gotta be false or sugarcoat it at all2000, “The Real Slim Shady”, in The Marshall Mathers LP, performed by Eminem:
- […] And I don't think we can sugarcoat both the human toll that is unfolding in Ukraine, but also how it is reordering the international architecture in ways that we haven't seen in decades.2022 March 23, Barack Obama, 2:52 from the start, in Centennial Celebration Conversation with President Barack Obama and Yo-Yo Ma, Chicago...
Synonyms of sugarcoat
Forms of sugarcoat
| third-person singular present | sugarcoats |
|---|---|
| present participle | sugarcoating |
| past participle | sugarcoated |
| past | sugarcoated |
| alternative form | sugar coat |
| alternative form | sugar-coat |
Origin of sugarcoat
From sugar + coat; figurative sense from the practice of coating medicinal tablets or pills with sugar in order to disguise their unpleasant taste (sugarcoating the pill).
Words formed from sugarcoat
Phrases with sugarcoat
Questions about sugarcoat
- What does sugarcoat mean?
- Sugarcoat means to coat with sugar.
- What is sugarcoat in Arabic?
- Sugarcoat in Arabic is غَطَّى بِالسُّكَّرِ (ḡaṭṭā bias-sukkari), حَسَّنَ (ḥassana), خَفَّفَ (ḵaffafa). See Sugarcoat meaning in Arabic.
- How do you use sugarcoat in a sentence?
- The only difference is I got the balls to say it in front of y'all / And I don't gotta be false or sugarcoat it at all
- What part of speech is sugarcoat?
- Sugarcoat is a verb.
- How do you pronounce sugarcoat?
- Sugarcoat is pronounced /ˈʃʊɡɚˌkoʊt/ (US).
- What is the past tense of sugarcoat?
- The past tense of sugarcoat is sugarcoated.
Words near sugarcoat in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sugarcoat (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-sugarcoat.wav.
Cite this entry: “sugarcoat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sugarcoat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.