soft soap

verb, noun — 5 senses

soft-soap

verbalso spelled soft-soap

1

Idiomatic, Informal To attempt to persuade by flattery or pleasing words; to butter up.

soft soap

noun

1

Any jellyish soap made by cooking natural oils and fats with potassium hydroxide.

2

Any fluid or semifluid soap.

3

Alternative Alternative form of soft-soap (“flattery, persuasion”).

Synonyms: green soap, potassium soap
Related terms: soft water

soft-soap

noun

1

Idiomatic Persuasion by means of flattery or pleasing words.

And look here, my dear, don't let them get round you with soft soap either.1928, Agatha Christie, The Mystery of the Blue Train:
If it ‘adn’t a-been for your soft soap I’d a-got my forty quid out o’ the old devil months ago.1937, Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon:

1 more example

Bond grinned again as he thought of Damon's exasperation at having to dish out a lot of soft soap to Washington when he probably had plenty of other Anglo-American snarls to disentangle.1954, Ian Fleming, “True or False?”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 89:

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — authors: page histories for soft-soap and soft soap.