See put lipstick on a pig on Wiktionary
{
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"form": "putting lipstick on a pig",
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"form": "put lipstick on a pig",
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"name": "en-verb"
}
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"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
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"examples": [
{
"text": "Near-synonyms: polish a turd, sugarcoat the pill"
},
{
"text": "That new box is like putting lipstick on a pig. It's still the same buggy program inside.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "1987, Warner Fusselle, Baseball...a Laughing Matter!, page 183:",
"text": "Fran Healy, Mets announcer and former Giants catcher (about the possibility of putting a dome on Candlestick): \"It would be like putting lipstick on a pig.\"",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To superficially alter something in the hope of making it seem more appealing than it is in actuality."
],
"id": "en-put_lipstick_on_a_pig-en-verb-PzfX4eCS",
"links": [
[
"superficially",
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],
[
"alter",
"alter"
],
[
"appealing",
"appealing"
],
[
"actuality",
"actuality"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) To superficially alter something in the hope of making it seem more appealing than it is in actuality."
],
"related": [
{
"word": "mutton dressed as lamb"
},
{
"word": "old wine in a new bottle"
},
{
"word": "you can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear"
},
{
"word": "you can't polish a turd"
},
{
"word": "cast pearls before swine"
}
],
"tags": [
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],
"translations": [
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "to superficially alter something — see also you can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"word": "kaunistella"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "to superficially alter something — see also you can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"word": "laittaa huulipunaa possulle"
},
{
"code": "he",
"lang": "Hebrew",
"sense": "to superficially alter something — see also you can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"word": "נזם זהב באף חזיר"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "to superficially alter something — see also you can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"tags": [
"imperfective"
],
"word": "czynić coś brzydkiego pozornie pięknym"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "to superficially alter something — see also you can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"tags": [
"perfective"
],
"word": "uczynić coś brzydkiego pozornie pięknym"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "to superficially alter something — see also you can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"word": "sminka en gris"
}
],
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"lipstick on a pig"
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{
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"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
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{
"word": "mutton dressed as lamb"
},
{
"word": "old wine in a new bottle"
},
{
"word": "you can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear"
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"word": "you can't polish a turd"
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{
"text": "Near-synonyms: polish a turd, sugarcoat the pill"
},
{
"text": "That new box is like putting lipstick on a pig. It's still the same buggy program inside.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "1987, Warner Fusselle, Baseball...a Laughing Matter!, page 183:",
"text": "Fran Healy, Mets announcer and former Giants catcher (about the possibility of putting a dome on Candlestick): \"It would be like putting lipstick on a pig.\"",
"type": "quote"
}
],
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"To superficially alter something in the hope of making it seem more appealing than it is in actuality."
],
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],
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"(idiomatic) To superficially alter something in the hope of making it seem more appealing than it is in actuality."
],
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"lipstick on a pig"
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"translations": [
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "to superficially alter something — see also you can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"word": "kaunistella"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "to superficially alter something — see also you can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"word": "laittaa huulipunaa possulle"
},
{
"code": "he",
"lang": "Hebrew",
"sense": "to superficially alter something — see also you can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"word": "נזם זהב באף חזיר"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "to superficially alter something — see also you can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"tags": [
"imperfective"
],
"word": "czynić coś brzydkiego pozornie pięknym"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "to superficially alter something — see also you can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"tags": [
"perfective"
],
"word": "uczynić coś brzydkiego pozornie pięknym"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "to superficially alter something — see also you can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"word": "sminka en gris"
}
],
"word": "put lipstick on a pig"
}
Download raw JSONL data for put lipstick on a pig meaning in All languages combined (3.6kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-02-08 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-02-02 using wiktextract (f90d964 and 9dbd323). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.