cushion the blow

Related to cushion the blow: cushiony

cushion the blow

To ease the pain or stress of something unpleasant. When my daughter had to get a shot at the doctor's office, I tried to cushion the blow by telling her we would go out for ice cream afterward.
See also: blow, cushion
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

cushion/soften the ˈblow

make something unpleasant seem less unpleasant and easier to accept: When he lost his job he was offered a cash payment to soften the blow.
See also: blow, cushion, soften
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
See also:
  • come to a bad end
  • come to a bad/sticky end
  • have no stomach for something
  • have the stomach for
  • be tainted by (something)
  • in for
  • be in for
  • be in for something
  • have an accident
  • learn (something) the hard way
References in periodicals archive
"The council is being forced to implement this, we are trying to cushion the blow but we can't go on doing it."
In order to cushion the blow of the global economic crisis the Government should rely on the budget.
"When you don't have a massive squad like a Manchester United, it can become very difficult when you lose big players." One player who has tried to cushion the blow of Miller's absense is Marc- Antoine Fortun, who was signed in the New Year.
A contents insurance policy will cushion the blow of having a bag stolen.
Most of us don't have his money to cushion the blow.
Freely cutting back and forth between each country and case in question helps cushion the blow, but there's no getting around the fact that Pandemic: Facing AIDS is often difficult to watch.
One result has been that an English mother saw her son badly injured before the War Office could cushion the blow. Another has been Iraq following suit in the war of publicity and parading prisoners on TV.
Scott and his crackerjack band, the Jazz Expressions, kept up a winning, flirtatious rapport that entranced the packed house from the first notes of his blissful rendition of Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies." That uptempo opener, culled from his new Fantasy disc "Mood Indigo," would cushion the blow he dealt with some of the tearier tunes that followed.
He added that the trend in the United Kingdom has been to align the calculation of taxable profits with accounting standards, and he pointed to the government's agreement to let insurers create tax-deductible equalization reserves to help cushion the blow of unusually heavy losses.
INVESTORS who missed out on the abandoned William Hill flotationhave been set a Spring Double poser to cushion the blow of having theirshare opportunity snatched away, writes Howard Wright.
In a Treasury Select Committee hearing, he said the cut in rates to a new all-time low of 0.25% from 0.5% and stimulus package worth up to PS170bn had already begun to cushion the blow of the Brexit vote.
The Bank snapped up PS1.17bn of so-called gilts as part of its new quantitative easing (QE) programme to help cushion the blow of the Brexit vote.
4 Cushion the blow Keep super-high heels for occasional wear and try not to walk on them for more than a few hours at a time.
It will help cushion the blow of losing injured new back-rower Morgan Allen who will miss the next four months because of a bicep injury after joining from the Ospreys in the summer.
And the interim-Hearts manager is hoping that experience will help him cushion the blow for the current Tynecastle kids who will be stood down for today's derby clash.