sweep under the rug

1. 1.

   to conceal something in the hopes it won't be discovered by others

   “The president tried to sweep the embarrassing incident under the rug”

   Broaderhide

Questions about sweep under the rug

What does sweep under the rug mean?

sweep under the rug means "to conceal something in the hopes it won't be discovered by others".

Is sweep under the rug a common word?

sweep under the rug is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.