Sugar-coat

Check out today’s Teatime Titbit: Wonderful Wednesday Word: Sugar-coat

Let’s face it, we all like a bit of something sweet now and again, possibly even more now that again. If your mouth is now watering at the thought of a cupcake, chocolate fudge cake, or pancakes with lemon and sugar – literally sugar-coated, I apologize. (It’s just happening to me as I think of biting into a bar of Galaxy chocolate)

Just recently I’ve come across the term ‘to sugar-coat’ in a number of different places, so I thought I’d highlight it today. According to: www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com

‘To sugar-coat something’ means to do something that makes an unpleasant situation seem less unpleasant. “There’s no way of sugar-coating it—the report predicts a grim future for the industry.” ‘To sugar or sweeten the pill’ are idiomatic synonyms.

If you want an acquaintance, friend, colleague or boss to ‘do something for you’ you have to ‘sweeten them up’ by giving them money or praising them etc. Similarly, you could also try to ‘butter your boss up’, which means to say nice things to him/her so that s/he will help you or give you something?

And if s/he ‘is like putty in your hand’, then everything’s sweet for you! If not, you’ll end up with sweet FA (sweet Fanny Adams or sweet Fuck All – whichever takes your fancy at the time.)

To highlight (herausstellen), grim (duster), acquaintance (Bekannter), to praise (loben), to be putty in sb’s hand (Wachs in jds Händen sein), sweet FA (rein gar nichts), to fancy (jdm gefallen)