Senior managing editor and logophile Andy Hollandbeck reveals the sometimes surprising roots of common English words and phrases. Remember: Etymology tells us where a word comes from, but not what it means today.
Like many other English words, candy came through French, but unlike most French descendants, it doesn’t trace back to Latin. Candy came from farther east.
Human beings have always had a sweet tooth, which many ancient peoples satisfied with honey. For a long time, that meant sweet-seekers had to suffer the stings of bees to enjoy the taste. Eventually, though, beekeeping techniques were developed that let us gather honey in less dangerous ways.
But ancient India had sugarcane, a tall perennial plant that grows well in tropical climates. It was long known that a person could get a hit of sweetness by chewing on a sugarcane stalk, but somewhere in the ancient fog of time, Indians discovered that if they mixed sugarcane juice with water and then boiled it down and let it cool, it would leave behind a solid chunk of light brown crystalized sweetness.
This yummy leftover was called, in Sanskrit, khanda, and a chunk of it was called khanda sharkara, the second element originally meaning “grit, gravel.” It has long been a common ingredient in Indian medicine.
Darius, the emperor of Persia, first encountered these unrefined brown sugar crystals — seemingly a type of honey made without bees — around A.D. 510 and saw an opportunity. He worked with Indians to export it around the known world, and it made him rich. Sugar couldn’t be kept a secret forever, though, and by the mid-7th century, the product and the means to make it were spreading throughout Europe.
Indian khanda became the Persian qand (cane sugar) and Arabic qandi. Meanwhile, sharkara became the Persian shakar and the Arabic sukkar, which found its way into Medieval Latin as succarum. The descendants of sharkara and khanda came back together in the Old French çucre candi, which is what French speakers at the time called chunks of rock sugar eaten as a treat.
Both words found purchase in English by the end of the 1200s. Ultimately candi got respelled as candy, and çucre became sugar.
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Comments
What a sweet surprise this ‘In A Word’ is. Now I want a baklava, and it’s your fault. The trips to Persian and Middle Eastern restaurants have had to be curtailed. unfortunately. It’s the whole I CAN afford it, but can’t justify the high cost otherwise. Maybe on my birthday (Memorial Day this year) I’ll get a nice surprise after dropping some hints?
One definitely sees the origins of modern counterparts in these vintage words. Khanda and khanda sharkara from the Sanskrit, the Persian shakar, the Arabic sukkar, getting close to sugar. The French got in there, then the English and we wound up getting candy AND sugar. We know dogs have a sweet tooth, but probably not more than for a creamy spoonful of Jif or Skippy peanut butter.