Barley-sugar
adj ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 a brittle transparent candy made by melting and cooling cane sugar wordnet
- 1 Very sweet-natured or saccharine; harmless. figuratively
"c. 1800, Anne Isabella Byron, quoted in Malcolm Elwin, Lord Byron's wife I shall write to you tomorrow on a subject which I have not now time to discuss. This I declare now because I like to excite your curiosity, and to delay gratifying it. I am a sweet chicken ! ! ! You ought to think me the most barley-sugar daughter in the creation!"
- 2 Twisted helically. not-comparable
"Chair-backs were very straight and no time was wasted on carving. This severe discipline prepared English craftsmen for their great period. After a slight relapse under Charles II into rather frivolous forms — very barley-sugar, but discreet […]"
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"c. 1800, Anne Isabella Byron, quoted in Malcolm Elwin, Lord Byron's wife I shall write to you tomorrow on a subject which I have not now time to discuss. This I declare now because I like to excite your curiosity, and to delay gratifying it. I am a sweet chicken ! ! ! You ought to think me the most barley-sugar daughter in the creation!"
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.