Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A sweet crystalline or powdered substance, white when pure, consisting of sucrose obtained mainly from sugar cane and sugar beets and used in many foods, drinks, and medicines to improve their taste.
- noun Any of a class of water-soluble crystalline carbohydrates, including sucrose and lactose, having a characteristically sweet taste and classified as monosaccharides, disaccharides, and trisaccharides.
- noun A unit, such as a lump or cube, in which sugar is dispensed or taken.
- noun Slang Sweetheart. Used as a term of endearment.
- intransitive verb To coat, cover, or sweeten with sugar.
- intransitive verb To make less distasteful or more appealing.
- intransitive verb To form sugar.
- intransitive verb To form granules; granulate.
- intransitive verb To make sugar or syrup from sugar maple sap. Often used with off.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To season, cover, sprinkle, mix, or impregnate with sugar.
- Figuratively, to cover as with sugar; sweeten; disguise so as to render acceptable what is otherwise distasteful.
- To sweeten something, as tea, with sugar.
- To make (maple) sugar.
- noun The general name of certain chemical compounds belonging to the group of carbohydrates.
- noun A sweet crystalline substance, prepared chiefly from the expressed juice of the sugarcane, Saccharum officinarum, and of the sugar-beet, but obtained also from a great variety of other plants, as maple, maize, sorghum, birch, and parsnip.
- noun Something that resembles sugar many of its properties.
- noun Figuratively, sweet, honeyed, or soothing words; flattery employed to disguise something distasteful.
- noun The coarse grains or dust of refined sugar formed during the operations of crushing or cutting loaf-sugar, and separated from the lumps by screening.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To impregnate, season, cover, or sprinkle with sugar; to mix sugar with.
- transitive verb To cover with soft words; to disguise by flattery; to compliment; to sweeten.
- intransitive verb Local, U.S. In making maple sugar, to complete the process of boiling down the sirup till it is thick enough to crystallize; to approach or reach the state of granulation; -- with the preposition
off . - noun A sweet white (or brownish yellow) crystalline substance, of a sandy or granular consistency, obtained by crystallizing the evaporated juice of certain plants, as the sugar cane, sorghum, beet root, sugar maple, etc. It is used for seasoning and preserving many kinds of food and drink. Ordinary sugar is essentially sucrose. See the Note below.
- noun By extension, anything resembling sugar in taste or appearance.
- noun colloq. Compliment or flattery used to disguise or render acceptable something obnoxious; honeyed or soothing words.
- noun See
Quercite . - noun sugar made from the sugar cane; sucrose, or an isomeric sugar. See
Sucrose . - noun (Med. Chem.) a variety of sugar (grape sugar or dextrose) excreted in the urine in diabetes mellitus; -- the presence of such a sugar in the urine is used to diagnose the illness.
- noun See under
Fruit , andFructose . - noun a sirupy or white crystalline sugar (dextrose or glucose) found as a characteristic ingredient of ripe grapes, and also produced from many other sources. See
Dextrose , andGlucose . - noun See under
Invert . - noun a variety of sugar isomeric with sucrose, found in malt. See
Maltose . - noun a substance found in manna, resembling, but distinct from, the sugars. See
Mannite . - noun a variety of sugar characteristic of fresh milk, and isomeric with sucrose. See
Lactose . - noun a sweet white crystalline substance isomeric with, and formerly regarded to, the glucoses. It is found in the tissue of muscle, the heart, liver, etc. Called also
heart sugar . SeeInosite . - noun See
Pinite . - noun (Com. Chem.) a variety of dextrose made by the action of heat and acids on starch from corn, potatoes, etc.; -- called also
potato sugar ,corn sugar , and, inaccurately,invert sugar . SeeDextrose , andGlucose . - noun one who refines sugar.
- noun (Bot.) a variety of beet (
Beta vulgaris ) with very large white roots, extensively grown, esp. in Europe, for the sugar obtained from them. - noun (Bot.) the hackberry.
- noun (Zoöl.) any one of several species of small South American singing birds of the genera Cœreba, Dacnis, and allied genera belonging to the family
Cœrebidæ . They are allied to the honey eaters. - noun See
Sugar orchard . - noun a place in or near a sugar orchard, where maple sugar is made.
- noun [Obs.] sugar candy.
- noun sugar clarified and concreted or crystallized; candy made from sugar.
- noun (Bot.) a tall perennial grass (
Saccharum officinarium ), with thick short-jointed stems. It has been cultivated for ages as the principal source of sugar. - noun A hat shaped like a sugar loaf.
- noun (Bot.) the rock maple (
Acer saccharinum ). SeeMaple . - noun a machine for pressing out the juice of the sugar cane, usually consisting of three or more rollers, between which the cane is passed.
- noun (Zoöl.) The lepisma.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Hence in the making of candy from granulated sugar, it is desirable to add glucose or sirup to granulated sugar or to change some of the crystallized sugar to a sugar which crystallizes with difficulty, _i. e._ _invert sugar_.
School and Home Cooking Carlotta Cherryholmes Greer
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These are made from granulated or other coarse sugar, while the uncooked ones are made from XXXX, or _confectioners ', sugar_, as it is sometimes called.
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_Confectioners 'sugar_ is a very finely ground form of cane or beet sugar.
School and Home Cooking Carlotta Cherryholmes Greer
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The English word sugar comes from the Arabic imitation of the Sanskrit sharkara, meaning gravel or small chunks of material; candy from the Arabic version of the Sanskrit for sugar itself, khandakah.
On Food and Cooking, The Science and Lore of the Kitchen Harold McGee 2004
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The English word sugar comes from the Arabic imitation of the Sanskrit sharkara, meaning gravel or small chunks of material; candy from the Arabic version of the Sanskrit for sugar itself, khandakah.
On Food and Cooking, The Science and Lore of the Kitchen Harold McGee 2004
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The term sugar is applied rather loosely to a large number of substances characterized by the quality of sweetness.
Commercial Geography A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges 1895
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Because the syrup from the canned pears are used in the recipe, very little extra sugar is added to it, but if you want to play with using fresh pears, a substitution with honey could probably be made.
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Because the syrup from the canned pears are used in the recipe, very little extra sugar is added to it, but if you want to play with using fresh pears, a substitution with honey could probably be made.
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“Hold on there, sug,” he croaked, pronouncing the endearment like the first part of the word sugar.
Water Song Suzanne Weyn 2006
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“Hold on there, sug,” he croaked, pronouncing the endearment like the first part of the word sugar.
Water Song Suzanne Weyn 2006
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This is not pop rap, not bubblegum trap, not a sloppy punk-meets-hip-hop fusion, but a definitive genre: sugar trap.
How Rico Nasty Rose to Rule the Sugar Trap Donna-Claire Chesman 2018
chained_bear commented on the word sugar
Captured at Yorktown, "3 hogsheads sugar, 3,000 lb."
October 29, 2007
treeseed commented on the word sugar
Especially amoung black people in the southern United States, sugar means affection, as in "Give me some sugar." By extension it can mean give me some sex.
February 4, 2008
bilby commented on the word sugar
When my birthday was coming
Little Brother had a secret:
He kept it for days and days
And just hummed a little tune when I asked him.
But one night it rained
And I woke up and heard him crying:
Then he told me.
'I planted two lumps of sugar in your garden
Because you love it so frightfully.
I thought there would be a whole sugar tree for your birthday.
And now it will all be melted.'
O the darling.
- Katherine Mansfield, 'Little Brother's Secret'.
November 1, 2008
fbharjo commented on the word sugar
Etymology: The word is Sanskrit which is an Indo-Iranian language of the Indo-Aryan branch but Persian played a role in transmitting it. Middle English sugre, sucre, from Anglo-French sucre, from Medieval Latin saccharum, from Old Italian zucchero, from Arabic sukkar, from Pahlavi shakar, ultimately from Sanskrit sarkar
August 31, 2009
minouchette commented on the word sugar
money
October 8, 2010
chained_bear commented on the word sugar
"... the pound of sugar that lasted an entire year in Alice de Bryene's household in the early 1400s would hardly have been enough for one person in the sixteenth century."
--Kate Colquhoun, Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking (NY: Bloomsbury, 2007), 102
January 9, 2017
chained_bear commented on the word sugar
Not a spice, but on my list because it was considered one in the Middle Ages (as are a number of other non-spice items also on the list). See also comment on electuaries.
"Beginning with the 18th century, sugar ceased to be considered a drug and changed from a mere food flavoring (what we understand as a spice) to an essential basic ingredient. At the same time, the end of medieval culinary practices meant that sweet dishes were separated from savory ones, so that the last course (dessert) came to be defined as sugary."
A note about how sugar was packed for long-distance transport/trade can be found on fondaci.
October 9, 2017
chained_bear commented on the word sugar
"Sugar was already versatile and important in late-medieval cuisine and medicine, but it was used in relatively small quantities because it was expensive. In Elizabethan England, average per capita sugar consumption was no more than a pound a year. It increased to four pounds a year in the seventeenth century, and by 1720 the average was at eight pounds. The present consumption of sugar in Britain is on the order of eighty pounds per year, and it is 126 pounds in the United States."
Paul Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2008), 219.
"It was the 18th and 19th centuries that saw an incredible increase in sugar consumption as tea and sweets became affordable for the working class and fruit pies and tarts surpassed meat pies in popularity. Sugar was a leading source of nutrition for urban workers as well as omnipresent in middle-class rituals of gentility (English tea or German service of coffee and cake). One historian has even credited the entire English Industrial Revolution to the combination of cheap energy provided by sugar and the alertness afforded by the caffeine in the tea it accompanied." (p. 220)
November 28, 2017
wcw1993 commented on the word sugar
What about: give me some sugar?
December 11, 2017
wcw1993 commented on the word sugar
As in give me a kiss.
December 11, 2017