sugarcoated promise
- noun
- Voters are tired of politicians making sugarcoated promises they cannot keep.
Examples
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The company lured investors with sugarcoated promises that turned out to be false.
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She recognized his apology as just another sugarcoated promise with no real change behind it.
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The politician made a sugarcoated promise to improve the economy.
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Don't believe that sugarcoated promise from the sales rep!
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Voters are tired of politicians making sugarcoated promises they cannot keep.
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The company lured investors with sugarcoated promises that turned out to be false.
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She recognized his apology as just another sugarcoated promise with no real change behind it.
Synonyms
10
3.8
A promise someone makes without any plan to keep it
A claim that something will be better than it can really be
How Likely
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly derivable from combining 'sugarcoat' (to present something more pleasant than reality) with 'promise' (an assurance), so it denotes a promise presented attractively and potentially misleading. This is a straightforward adjectival modification pattern and the 'sugarcoat' metaphor is cross-linguistically familiar, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will likely understand it.
Etymology
Sugarcoated promise comes from the image of covering something bitter with sugar so it looks and tastes sweet. So a sugarcoated promise is a 'promise' that sounds nice but may be 'misleading' or 'not kept'.