hard candy
7
1.0
- noun
- /hɑrd ˈkændi/
- US
:
caramelo duro
- After dinner, the children enjoyed sucking on hard candy while watching their favorite movie.
- suck on hard candy
- piece of hard candy
- wrapped hard candy
Coonan, do you have a hard candy I could suck on?
- Coonan, do you have a hard candy I could suck on?
- I have high hopes because the first ingredient is sugar and it's in hard candy and usually hard kitties work pretty well so let's see they smell just like root beer.
Examples
-
As I paid for them, S spied a dish of hard candies on the counter.
Blog text (21) -
"We're rich!" Mark crowed, producing a bag of hard candy.
Fiction book (1991) -
A small boy came by and dropped three pieces of hard candy on the table.
Blog text (3) -
I may have gotten some hard candy for the trip home.
-
Students earned either hard candy, ten minutes of computer, or 10 minutes of free time.
Academic text (1993) -
I had brought a small gift, a jar of hard candy wrapped in tissue paper.
Fiction book (1991) -
All of them were sucking on the hard candies.
Fiction book (1994) -
There were signs that she ate rice cakes, pretzels, and hard candy.
Academic text (2004) -
My absolute favorites were lemon squashes, yellow hard candies formed into lemon shapes, and dusted with yellow sugar.
Fiction book (1993) -
A slight, red-bearded Yankee, he was constantly sucking on hard candies, which clicked wetly against his ill-fitting dentures.
Academic text (2011)
Synonyms
863
1.0
A small sweet made from sugar, often with chocolate or nuts
69
1.0
A small sugary food eaten after a meal
24
1.0
A hard sweet on a small stick that you lick or suck
22
1.0
A hard sweet stick with red and white stripes that tastes like mint and is used at Christmas
18
2.6
A sweet hard candy made from butter and brown sugar
8
3.7
Sweet food like candy or a small cake
3
2.2
A hard sweet made of large clear sugar crystals on a stick
1
1.5
A small hard sweet with a strong mint taste often red and white
1
1.0
A hard sweet made by boiling sugar and letting it cool
1
1.0
A small sweet with a mint taste that is often hard or chewy
How Hard
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'hard' describes the texture of 'candy', so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer a solid, brittle sweet meant to be sucked rather than chewed. This adjective+noun combination follows common, cross-linguistic compounding patterns and is therefore immediately understandable from its parts.
Etymology
Hard candy comes from how the sweet is made: sugar is boiled and cooled until it becomes very hard and glass-like. Because it is so solid and brittle, people 'suck' rather than 'chew' it, so hard candy means a sweet you eat by sucking.