sugarcoat

• sugar-coat

sugar +‎ coat; from the practice of coating medicinal tablets or pills with sugar in order to disguise their unpleasant taste

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈʃʊɡɚˌkoʊt/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈʃʊɡəˌkəʊt/
• Hyphenation: sug‧ar‧coat

sugarcoat (third-person singular simple present sugarcoats, present participle sugarcoating, simple past and past participle sugarcoated)

1. (transitive) 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.

• gild
• gild the pill
• whitewash

• sugar-coated, sugarcoated
• sugar-coating, sugarcoating