the.com/sugarplum
A candy so famous it stars in ballet, yet almost nobody alive has tasted one.
means A small, round sweet—originally a hard candy of layered sugar, sometimes coating a seed or spice—now mostly a nostalgic word for a dainty confection or, affectionately, for a beloved person.
from A plain English compound of 'sugar' and 'plum,' though the 'plum' here doesn't mean the fruit—'plum' was an old catch-all for any small dried fruit or sweet morsel (the same loose sense that gave us 'plum pudding,' which contains no plums). The original sugarplums were laboriously made by coating a tiny seed or nut with layer upon layer of boiled sugar, a process called panning, until it grew round and hard. The word dates to the 17th century, and the term of endearment grew naturally from it—calling someone your sugarplum is calling them as sweet and prized as the candy.
- no plums
- Originally hard candied seeds, fruit not required
- comfit craft
- Made by layering sugar coats over days
- ballet fame
- The Nutcracker's Sugar Plum Fairy made it immortal
- verb form
- To sugarplum once meant to flatter or sweet-talk
- dance them
- Visions of sugarplums predate the candy's real fame
sugarplum fairy — character in tchaikovsky's nutcracker ballet, premiered 1892
sugarplum plum — fruit hybrid between sugar apple and plum, cultivated in california