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can·dy (kăndē)
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n. pl. can·dies
1.
a. A rich sweet confection made with sugar and often flavored or combined with fruits or nuts.
b. A piece of such a confection.
2. Slang An illicit drug, especially one, such as cocaine, that has a sugary appearance or a drug in pill form, such as MDMA.
tr.v. can·died, can·dy·ing, can·dies
To cook, preserve, saturate, or coat with sugar or syrup: candy apples; candy ginger.
[Middle English candi, crystallized cane sugar, short for sugre-candi, partial translation of Old French sucre candi, ultimately from Arabic sukkar qandī : sukkar, sugar + qandī, consisting of sugar lumps (from qand, lump of crystallized sugar, from an Indic source akin to Pali kaṇḍa-, from Sanskrit khaṇḍakaḥ, from khaṇḍaḥ, piece, fragment, perhaps of Munda origin).]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
 

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

    Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

    Indo-European Roots

    Semitic Roots

    The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

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