sugar definition

English sugar definition

• Sugar in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

Alternative forms

• shugar (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English sugre, sucre, from Middle French sucre, from Old French çucre (circa 13th century), from Old Italian zucchero (or another vernacular of Italy),^[1] from Arabic سُكَّر‎ (sukkar), from Persian شکر‎ (šakar), from Middle Persian [script needed] (škl), 𐫢𐫞𐫡‎ (šqr /⁠šakar⁠/), from Sanskrit शर्करा (śárkarā, “ground or candied sugar", originally "grit, gravel”).^[2] Akin to Ancient Greek κρόκη (krókē, “pebble”). Doublet of jaggery and sucro-.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈʃʊɡə(ɹ)/
• (General American) enPR: sho͝ogʹər, IPA^(key): /ˈʃʊɡɚ/

• Audio (UK)

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• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʊɡə(ɹ)

Noun

sugar (countable and uncountable, plural sugars)

1. (uncountable) Sucrose in the form of small crystals, obtained from sugar cane or sugar beet and used to sweeten food and drink.
   • 1792, Francis Collingwood, The universal cook: and city and country housekeeper‎^[2]:

     To a pound of gooseberries take a pound and a half of double-refined sugar. Clarify the sugar with water, a pint to a pound of sugar, and when the syrup is cold, put the gooseberries single in your preserving pan, put the syrup to them, and set them on a gentle fire.

   • 1895 April 1, “The Present Crisis”, in The Sugar Cane‎^[3], volume 27, number 309, page 171:

     There appears to be no prospect of success in attempting to combat the crisis by international arrangement, and any improvement in sugar prices can only be looked for from a diminution of the production, either as a consequence of deficient crops, or of a reduction in manufacture.

   • 2013, Robert Paarlberg, Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know?‎^[4]:

     Even in extreme cases such as chemical pollution in the Florida Everglades from heavily subsidized sugar farming, strong regulations are routinely blocked by industry.

2. (countable) A specific variety of sugar.
   • 1915 September 18, “Drying Sugars Essential to Their Preservation”, in The Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer‎^[5], volume 55:

     The experience of sugar planters in Louisiana this year in holding their sugars in warehouse for future sales at better prices has revealed again, as it has done heretofore, the fact that the presence of moisture in the sugars is inimical to their maintaining their standard of quality

3. (countable, chemistry) Any of various small carbohydrates that are used by organisms to store energy.

   Hypernyms: see Thesaurus:carbohydrate

   • 1942, James E. Kraus, Effects of partial defoliation at transplanting time on subsequent‎^[6]:

     At the end of the second week there were less reducing sugars in the unpruned plants than in the previous week, but those in the pruned plants were the same.

   • 1994, Peter J. Van Soest, Nutritional Ecology of the Ruminant‎^[7]:

     Generally speaking, plants have a much greater variety of sugars and linkages than animal tissues have.

   • 1998, A.J. Harborne, Phytochemical Methods A Guide to Modern Techniques of Plant Analysis‎^[8]:

     The major free sugars in plants are the monosaccharides, glucose and fructose (and the disaccharide sucros), together with traces of xylose, rhamnose and galactose.

   • 2007, Ajit Varma, Plant Surface Microbiology‎^[9]:

     Although H. bertonii relies on scale insects to prepare its parasitism site on plants, it directly absorbs and utilizes plant sugars.

4. (countable) A small serving of this substance (typically about one teaspoon), used to sweeten a drink.

   He usually has his coffee white with one sugar.

   • 1916, Cosmo Hamilton, “Miss Fanny Goes to Great Lengths”, in The World To-day: A Monthly Record of Human Progress‎^[10], volume 30:

     “A slice of lemon and two sugars, please.” “You needn't have said that. I know how you like your tea. I know how you like everything.”

   • 1993, 1:13:03 from the start, in Groundhog Day, spoken by Phil (Bill Murray):

     Skim milk, two sugar.

   • 2016, Ameera Patel, Outside the Lines‎^[11]:

     Then there are the coffees, one with two sweeteners and no milk, one with one sweetener and milk, one with three sugars and a dash of milk, one with one sugar and lots of milk and finally her Uncle Samad who says that anything is fine.

5. (countable) A term of endearment.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:sweetheart

   I'll be with you in a moment, sugar.

   • 1969, “Sugar, Sugar”, in Everything's Archie, performed by The Archies:

     Sugar, ah honey honey / You are my candy girl / And you've got me wanting you

6. (uncountable, slang) Affection shown by kisses or kissing.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:buss

   • 1992, Army of Darkness, spoken by Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell):

     Gimme some sugar, baby.

7. (chiefly southern US, slang, uncountable) Effeminacy in a male, often implying homosexuality.

   I think John has a little bit of sugar in him.

   • 1998, Lene Østermark-Johansen, Sweetness and Strength, →ISBN:

     There are depths and heights of beauty in him beyond tears - but there is no sugar, not even any honey.

   • 1999, Peggy J. Rudd, My Husband Wears My Clothes, →ISBN:

     The crossdresser is showing the desire to be "sugar and spice" through feminine clothing and through the expression of feminine feelings.

   • 2008, Reuben A. Buford May, Living Through the Hoop, →ISBN:

     Because of Patrick's mannerisms, the players teased him by referring to him as “Sweetness” or saying that he had “sugar” in his pants.

8. (uncountable, informal) Diabetes.
   • 2002, Mrs Sheila Hillier, David Kelleher, Researching Cultural Differences in Health, →ISBN, page 94:

     One respondent said that he had been told by his doctor that he had 'sugar' and diabetes, thus affirming for him the distinctiveness of the two illnesses. The distinction made sense to some of them as the relationship between diabetes and 'sugar' seemed to relate to their experiences of the West Indies, where 'sugar' was believed to be rare and diabetes common.

   • 2003, Tom Lee, Above All We Ask Or Think, →ISBN, page 53:

     The veterinarian said his real problem was that he had sugar, and not to concentrate on the problem with his eyes.

   • 2004, Diane M. Parker, Ruth E. Mark, Reflections on a Life with Diabetes: A Memoir in Many Voices, →ISBN, page 57:

     Don't you love it when you start a new Disease - the pamphlets, the prescriptions, the attention? And the past turning ironic, cloudy, as if you'd added a chemical - my house painter saying he has sugar, reminding me of my mother demanding the sweet drool from every baby.

   • 2008, De'lois Washington McMillan, Suppose Jesus Had Thrown in the Towel and Given Up on Us, →ISBN:

     The doctor told me I had sugar and would have to take pills.

   • 2012, Bert Fraser-Reid, From Sugar to Splenda, →ISBN:

     The memorable event was watching my father test urine, his or that of sundry other folks who had “sugar”, as diabetes was known in the rural hills of Jamaica where I grew up.

9. (dated) Anything resembling sugar in taste or appearance, especially in chemistry.

   Sugar of lead (lead acetate) is a poisonous white crystalline substance with a sweet taste.

   • 1717, M. de Fontenelle, “Upon the Iron of Plants”, in The Lives of the French, Italian and German Philosophers‎^[12]:

     Mons. Lemery is of Opinion that Sweetness proceeds from a close Mixture of an Acid with a Sulphur, or with an Oyl that temperates and corrects it; he supports his Conjecture by the instance of Sugar of Saturn, so called from its Sweetness, which is Lead, a Metal insipid in its self, but very Sulphureous, dissolved by an Acid.

   • 1788, Torbern Olof Bergman, “Of Magnesia”, in E. Cullen, transl., Physical and chemical essays‎^[13], volume 1, translation of original in Swedish, page 448:

     The fluor acid, the acid of sugar, of phosphorus, and vitriol, separate magnelia from the acid of arsenic; but the acid of tartar, united with arsenicated magnesia, is generally found to compose a triple salt.

   • 1904, “Process of Making Milk Sugar”, in The American Sugar Industry and Beer Sugar Gazette‎^[14], volume 6, page 392:

     Sugar of milk is now produced by partly chemical means from milk-whey, the product being about two and a half pounds per hundred pounds of whey.

10. Compliment or flattery used to disguise or render acceptable something obnoxious; honeyed or soothing words.
11. (US, slang, uncountable) Heroin.

    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:heroin

12. (US, slang, uncountable, dated) Money.
13. (programming) Syntactic sugar.
    • 2005, Bruce Ian Mills, Theoretical Introduction to Programming, page 180:

      However, this bookkeeping is much less local syntax and sugar.

Hyponyms

Meronyms

Derived terms

Descendants

Translations

Verb

sugar (third-person singular simple present sugars, present participle sugaring, simple past and past participle sugared)

1. (transitive) To add sugar to; to sweeten with sugar.

   John heavily sugars his coffee.

   • 1876, Emilie Foster, Teddy and His Friends‎^[15]:

     See, I've put sugar-plums on his coat for fancy buttons, sugared his shirt-frill, and put on a red almond to his hat-front.

   • 1905, “The Duke of Castle Blanco”, in The Quiver‎^[16], page 1007:

     "There spoke the real British scorn," she said, sugaring her tea, "the fine British contempt for every other nation."

   • 2002, Frank Tallis, Hidden Minds: A History of the Unconscious‎^[17]:

     Moreover, the residents recalled that the aristocrat's pet canary had become like a personal retainer, waking his master in the morning and sugaring his drink.

2. (transitive) To make (something unpleasant) seem less so.

   She has a gift for sugaring what would otherwise be harsh words.

   • 1890, Anson De Puy Van Buren, Michigan in her pioneer politics:

     He also published the "Weekly Recorder," an indefinite title, which was his way of sugaring what soon became in the region where it was published, Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, a very bitter pill.

   • 1917, Mrs. Florence Guertin Tuttle, Give My Love to Maria‎^[18]:

     She shook her head sadly at him. "No, it won't do, Arthur. I'm not in a mood to be sugared."

   • 2001, Graham Fraser, René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois in Power‎^[19]:

     But step by step, aided by Claude Morin's arguments, Lévesque had led the party through the process of sugaring what he saw as the pill of independence.

3. (US, Canada, regional) In making maple sugar, to complete the process of boiling down the syrup till it is thick enough to crystallize; to approach or reach the state of granulation; with the preposition off.
   • 1851, J. D. H., “On Making Maple Syrup”, in The Ohio Cultivator, volume 7, page 91:

     To sugar off, I prefer using a kettle that will hold about half a. barrel; and boil over a brisk, steady fire, till on dropping some of the syrup into cold water it will break like glass, then dip it into wooden trays to cool, and when it is grained stir it briskly.

   • 1994, “Sugaring Off”, in Nindinawemaagan Giwitaa'ayeyii, volume 6, page 55:

     A long time ago my grandmother and I used to boil maple sap. When she sugared off, I stood there.

   • 2004, Lois Sakany, Canada: A Primary Source Cultural Guide‎^[20]:

     During the spring in Quebec and Ontario, maple syrup is harvested, or "sugared off," a process which is usually celebrated as a social event.

4. (entomology) To apply sugar to trees or plants in order to catch moths.
   • 1876, W. Sandison, “Note on sugaring”, in The Entomologist's Monthly Magazine‎^[21], volume 12, page 207:

     Some entomologists assert that it is useless to sugar when ivy is in bloom.

   • 1921, Arthur Herbert Savory, Grain and Chaff from an English Manor‎^[22]:

     The latter are best taken by "sugaring" — painting patches of mixed beer and sugar on a series of tree trunks, and making several rounds at twilight with a lantern and a cyanide bottle.

   • 2006, William J. Sutherland, Ecological Census Techniques: A Handbook‎^[23]:

     Sugaring attracts some species of moth that do not readily come to light.

5. (programming, transitive) To rewrite (source code) using syntactic sugar.
   • 2002, Jonathan Bromley, “Fixed point arithmetic”, in comp.arch.fpga (Usenet):

     You can sugar the syntax of constants thus: […]

   • 2006, Neil Madden, “Re: Closures”, in comp.lang.tcl (Usenet):

     Sure, you could sugar the latter to look like the former (effectively implementing closures as objects), but it seems simpler to just allow the former.

6. (transitive) To compliment (a person).
7. To remove hair using a paste of sugar, water, and lemon juice.

Synonyms

• (add sugar to): sweeten
• (make less unpleasant): sweeten, sugar-coat

Derived terms

Translations

Interjection

sugar

1. (minced oath) Used in place of shit!

   Oh, sugar!

   • 1920, James A. Cooper, Tobias O' the Light: A Story of Cape Cod‎^[24]:

     "Oh, sugar! I suppose that's so," reflected Tobias, filling his pipe.

   • 2007, Melinda Henneberger, If They Only Listened to Us: What Women Voters Want Politicians to Hear‎^[25]:

     But they do not even hope for such a thing in '08, and fear far worse: Sister Suzanne Thibault, a lifelong Republican so mild she shouts, “Oh, sugar!” when annoyed, posits that if Hillary Clinton were nominated, “She'd get killed, literally assassinated. We have too many right-wing people out there who would do that."

   • 2012, Macy Beckett, Sultry with a Twist‎^[26]:

     “Oh, sugar.” His room was empty.

Derived terms

• sugar honey ice tea

Translations

See also

• glyco-
• -ose

References

• “sugar”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.
• “sugar”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• “sugar”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
• Douglas Harper (2001–2023), “sugar”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
• “sugar” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.
• “sugar”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “sugar”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• Argus, Guras, argus, gaurs, guars, ragus, ragùs

Basque sugar definition

Etymology

From su +‎ gar.

Noun

sugar inan

1. flame

Galician sugar definition

Alternative forms

• chuchar, suchar, zugar

Etymology

From Vulgar Latin *sucāre, from Latin sugere, present active infinitive of sugō, from Proto-Indo-European *sug-, *suk-.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [suˈɣaɾ]

Verb

sugar (first-person singular present sugo, first-person singular preterite suguei, past participle sugado)

1. to suck
   • 1858, O Seor Pedro, Romance Gallego..., Santiago: Imprenta de Manuel Mirás, page 2:

     Deixáradesme ir pra terra, pra que as miñocas as tripas e os ósos me esfuracasen e me sugasen axiña

     You'll let me go to the earth, so that promptly the earthworms drill and suck my guts and bones

Conjugation

Derived terms

• sugota

Related terms

• samesuga

References

• “semesuga” in Xavier Varela Barreiro & Xavier Gómez Guinovart: Corpus Xelmírez - Corpus lingüístico da Galicia medieval. SLI / Grupo TALG / ILG, 2006–2018.
• “sugar” in Dicionario de Dicionarios da lingua galega, SLI - ILGA 2006–2013.
• “sugar” in Tesouro informatizado da lingua galega. Santiago: ILG.
• “zugar” in Álvarez, Rosario (coord.): Tesouro do léxico patrimonial galego e portugués, Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega.

Ido sugar definition

Etymology

Borrowed from German saugen and Latin sūgere, present active infinitive of sūgō, and to some extent English suck.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /suˈɡar/

Verb

sugar (present tense sugas, past tense sugis, future tense sugos, imperative sugez, conditional sugus)

1. (transitive) to suck (candy, etc., something from something)

   Sugar la suko de oranjo.

   To suck the juice from an orange.

Conjugation

Derived terms

• suganta (“sucking; (zool.) suctorial”)
• sugilo (“sucker (as of an insect)”)
• mamsugar (“to suckle”)

Latin sugar definition

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈsuː.ɡar/, [ˈs̠uːɡär]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈsu.ɡar/, [ˈsuːɡär]

Verb

sūgar

1. first-person singular future passive indicative of sūgō

Portuguese sugar definition

Etymology

From Vulgar Latin *sucāre, from Latin sūgere, from Proto-Indo-European *sug-, *suk-. Cognate with Galician sugar.

Pronunciation

• Hyphenation: su‧gar

Verb

sugar (first-person singular present sugo, first-person singular preterite suguei, past participle sugado)

1. to suck

Conjugation

Romanian sugar definition

Etymology

From suge (“to suck”) +‎ -ar. Compare Dalmatian sugol (“lamb”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /suˈɡar/

Adjective

sugar m or n (feminine singular sugară, masculine plural sugari, feminine and neuter plural sugare)

1. suckling

Declension

Noun

sugar m (plural sugari, feminine equivalent sugară)

1. unweaned baby, newborn
2. suckling, young mammal that hasn't weaned yet

Declension

Synonyms

• sugaci

Venetian sugar definition

Etymology

From Latin exsūcāre, present active infinitive of exsūcō (“I juice; I dry”) (compare Italian asciugare, Friulian suiâ).

Verb

sugar

1. (transitive) to wipe, dry

Conjugation

• Venetian conjugation varies from one region to another. Hence, the following conjugation should be considered as typical, not as exhaustive.

Related terms

• sugaman

See also

• suto