smooth over

phrasal verb

smoothed over; smoothing over; smooths over also smoothes over

: to make (a disagreement, problem, difficulty, etc.) seem less serious than it really is

Don't worry about missing the application deadline—we'll smooth that over with the office.

She smoothed over the objections to his candidacy.

Examples of smooth over in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

But the call with Von der Leyen appeared to smooth over tensions, at least for now. —Seung Min Kim, Los Angeles Times, 26 May 2025

With the recent speculation that Soto is unhappy in the Mets clubhouse after signing a 15-year contract, Soto and the Mets will have to smooth over any wrinkles that are effecting his day to day impact. —Hunter Mulholland, MSNBC Newsweek, 20 May 2025

This ingredient smooths over any imperfections and makes skin luminous. —Katie Decker-Jacoby, StyleCaster, 15 May 2025

Pagels’s larger point is that the most improbable Gospel tales serve to patch a fractured narrative—using familiar tropes and myths to smooth over inconsistencies that believers struggled with from the beginning. —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 24 Mar. 2025

Rhymes for smooth over

• carryover
• changeover
• crossover
• cutover
• flashover
• hangover
• holdover
• layover
• leftover
• makeover
• moreover
• passover