sugar and spice
3
3.5
- noun
- Informal
- She has a personality full of sugar and spice, making everyone feel welcome and happy.
- sugar and spice and everything nice
Examples
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The little girl was the epitome of sugar and spice, charming everyone with her sweet smile.
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Whatever happened to sugar and spice and everything nice?
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You were sugar and spice.
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It's in education, where boys are considered a nuisance, while girls are "made of sugar and spice and everything nice."
Blog text (26) -
sugar and spice
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Sugar and spice
Blog text (8) -
This time, he makes sure to add a little sugar and spice and delivers his first female offspring, full of gooey love and romps through tall grass among giant ticks.
Blog text (22) -
Her kindness and laughter make her a true example of sugar and spice in our lives.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
Pleasing to the senses or feelings
450
1.0
Pleasant and attractive in a way that people like
323
1.0
Giving a gentle feeling of enjoyment
169
2.0
Something very pleasant that makes you happy
3
8.0
Very pleasant and attractive in an informal, friendly way
2
3.2
Kind and gentle toward others
1
8.8
Making people feel very happy
A thing that is very sweet and makes you feel happy
Antonyms
How Pleasant
Surface Forms
Morphology
The nouns 'sugar' and 'spice' both carry positive sensory connotations, so a B1 learner who knows those words would likely infer a general sense of pleasantness or charm from the combination. However, the expression is a conventionalized collocation with cultural nuance and a fixed idiomatic use (e.g., 'sugar and spice and everything nice'), so the exact evaluative meaning is not fully predictable from the parts.
Etymology
The phrase sugar and spice comes from an old children's rhyme that names tasty things like sugar and spice to paint a picture of someone sweet and lovely. So it now means 'very pleasant' or 'charming'.