dorer

"To gild" (dorer un cadre) and, in cooking, to brown something with egg wash or butter (dorer une pâte, faire dorer un poulet) — plus the well-known idiom dorer la pilule, to sugarcoat unpleasant news.

• Badigeonnez la pâte pour la faire dorer. — Brush the pastry to make it turn golden brown.
• Le cadre du tableau a été doré à l'or fin. — The picture frame was gilded with fine gold.
• Il essaie de nous dorer la pilule. — He's trying to sugarcoat it for us.

Se dorer la pilule shifted meaning over the last few decades from "to delude oneself" toward "to sunbathe/laze around" — context decides which sense is meant, and learners often only know one of the two.

• expression Dorer la pilule — Traces back to 17th-century apothecaries coating bitter pills in sugar or gold leaf so patients could swallow them — Littré's 1863 dictionary already records the figurative sense of softening unpleasant news.