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Glite Dictionary
candy kiss

candy kiss

2.3
A small wrapped piece of chocolate you eat in one bite
  • noun
  • /ˈkændi kɪs/
  • US
translation icon : beso de chocolate
  • For Valentine's Day, he gave her a heart-shaped box filled with candy kisses.

Examples

  • The children eagerly reached into the jar to grab a candy kiss each.

  • Minutiae like candy kisses.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • She placed a candy kiss on top of each cupcake to make them look festive.

Synonyms

kiss
vscandy kiss
26 4.4

A small sweet candy often made of chocolate and wrapped in foil

is a small individually wrapped chocolate piece not any sweet treat
chocolate kiss
vscandy kiss
1 2.6

A small cone of chocolate wrapped in shiny foil

is a general small wrapped chocolate confection not limited to a conical shape

Surface Forms

candy kiss singular
candy kisses plural

Morphology

candy + kiss

The meaning is directly compositional: 'candy' (a sweet) + 'kiss' (here a small chocolate/ confection or a name for a bite-sized sweet) yields a small piece of candy. This noun–noun combination follows ordinary English compounding and is predictable to a B1 learner who knows both constituent senses (any brand-specific name like Hershey's Kisses does not remove its compositional transparency).

Etymology

Candy kiss comes from the tiny candy's shape and the image of a quick kiss. One popular story says early machines dropped a small bit of chocolate with a soft kiss onto a tray, so people began to call each small, wrapped chocolate a kiss, and that's why 'candy kiss' means a 'small, bite-sized chocolate treat'.