sugary

Etymology

It is formed from English sugar + -y.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} Sugar is from Old French sucre, from Medieval Latin succārum, which goes back through Arabic and Persian to Sanskrit.^[3][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Figuratively, deliciously or alluringly sweet; honeyed: 1591, in Spenser's Prosopopoia.^[2][5] Etymonline dates the word to the 1590s, in literal and figurative use.^[3] Dictionary.com gives 1585–95.^[6]

Semantic evolution

Like the older adjectives sugared (late 14th century) and sugarish (early 15th century), it was used figuratively from the start, of pleasant and flattering speech.^[3][2] The literal sense, full of sugar or tasting of it, is recorded from 1598, in a translation of Guillemeau's surgery.^[2] The figurative sense soon came to imply excess or deceit: something too sweet, or falsely pleasant.^[3][2][4] A rare sense "fond of sweet things" is recorded in 1664.^[2] In Cornish dialect sugary formed compounds such as sugary-candy, sugar candy.^[8]

Timeline

• 1591 – figurative: alluringly sweet, honeyed; deceitfully pleasant.^[2][5]
• 1598 – containing sugar; sweet, sweetened.^[2]
• 1664 – fond of sugar or sweet things (rare, obsolete).^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Containing a lot of sugar, or tasting of it: sugary breakfast cereals.^[9][5][4]
2. Too sweet or sentimental; saccharine: a sugary love song.^[9][5][4]
3. Pleasant in a way that is not sincere; honeyed: He greeted the inspector with a sugary smile.^[9][5][2]

Word family

• sugariness
• unsugary

Related words

• sugar
• sugared

Usage notes

A separate, rare noun sugary, formed irregularly from sugar with the suffix -ery, once meant a sugar factory (from 1696); in North America it is still used for a place where maple sap is boiled to make sugar (from 1840).^[2][4]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
9. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins