English

Verb

slur over ‎(third-person singular simple present slurs over, present participle slurring over, simple past and past participle slurred over)

1. (dated) To deal with something hurriedly, treat in a perfunctory manner.
   • 1846, E.A. Poe, The literati of New York, no. 1

     The bad points of the work are slurred over and the good ones brought out into the best light, all this through a feeling akin to that which makes it unpleasant to speak ill of one to one's face.

   • 1899, Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection, translated by Maude, book 1 chapter 45

     He took up several sheets of paper covered with writing, and began to read rapidly, slurring over the uninteresting legal terms and laying particular stress on some sentences.

   • 1913, D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, chapter 1

     Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over.

   • 1918, Archibald McKellar MacMechan, The Cambridge History of American Literature, book 2 chapter 10

     After his college days comes an episode which his biographers seem inclined to slur over, perhaps from a false sense of the dignity of biography, and that is the two years, from 25 April, 1841, to May, 1843, which Thoreau spent under Emerson’s roof.

Synonyms

• gloss over
• skate over