gloss over
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English
Pronunciation
Audio (General Australian): (file)
Verb
gloss over (third-person singular simple present glosses over, present participle glossing over, simple past and past participle glossed over)
- (transitive, idiomatic) To cover up a mistake or a crime; to hush up or whitewash.
- Synonym: paper over
- They glossed over the problem, hoping that the customers wouldn't notice.
- 1790, Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men[1]:
- Plausibility, I know, can only be unmasked by shewing the absurdities it glosses over, and the simple truths it involves with specious errors.
- (transitive, idiomatic) To treat something with less care than it in some ways deserves; to ignore, or at least to discount or dismiss for the current purposes.
- This book only glosses over quantum mechanics, and doesn't go into detail.
- We glossed over the petty small talk and got directly into the problem.
Translations
to cover up a mistake or a crime; to hush up or whitewash
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to treat something with less care than it deserves; to ignore
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