ˈsugar-plum
[f. sugar n. + plum n.]
1. A small round or oval sweetmeat, made of boiled sugar and variously flavoured and coloured; a comfit.
| a 1668 Davenant Wits iv. Wks. (1673) 205 Some Comfits Sir. A mourning Citizen Will never weep without some Sugar-plums. 1673 O. Walker Educ. v. 44 A sensibleness in youth for a gig or a suggar-plum, is the same afterwards for honour or interest. 1709 Addison Tatler No. 148 ¶11 Little Plates of Sugar-Plumbs, disposed like so many Heaps of Hail-stones. 1712 tr. Pomet's Hist. Drugs I. 2 Use it like Caraway seeds for Confects and Sugar-plums. 1828 Scott Jrnl. 3 May, Compliments flew about like sugar-plums at an Italian carnival. 1840 Hood Up Rhine 197 A little while ago there were proclamations in the papers against poison-coloured sugar-plums. 1859 Boyd Recr. Country Parson vi. 199 Sugar-plums..damage the teeth. 1908 [Miss Fowler] Betw. Trent & Ancholme 378, I can see now the sugar-plums, with wire stalks. |
2. fig. Something very pleasing or agreeable, esp. when given as a sop or bribe.
| 1608 Dekker Lanth. & Candle-Lt. Wks. (Grosart) III. 270 By stopping the Constables mouth with sugar-plummes (thats to say,) whilst she poisons him with sweete wordes. 1641 J. Jackson True Evang. T. ii. 129 With a perfumed Comfite, or a Sugar-plumbe in their mouth, that is, with a word of piety. 1738 tr. Guazzo's Art Conv. 70 Thus you leave them with a small sugar-plumb in their mouth. 1789 (title) The Sugar Plumb; or, sweet amusements for leisure hours. 1813 Mrs. Jackson in Sir G. Jackson's Diaries & Lett. (1873) II. 7 The little sugar-plum, in the shape of a small pension, they have put into your mouth. 1818 Scott Hrt. Midl. xxxviii, Her zeal for inquiry slaked for the present by the dexterous administration of this sugar plum. 1867 Trollope Chron. Barset I. xxiv. 204 An artist..whom the rich English world was beginning to pet and pelt with gilt sugar-plums. 1883 Reade Many a Slip in Harper's Mag. Dec. 136/2 Whilst he delivered these sugar-plums he did not look her in the face. |
† 3. transf. a. A kind of fossil. Obs.
| 1681 Grew Musæum iii. §i. v. 296 A Great Tibuline Sugar-Plum. [Cf. a 1700 Evelyn Diary 20 June 1644, An hard stone, which hangs about like icicles, having many others in the form of comfitures and sugar plums as wee call them.] |
† b. A kind of knotting. Obs.
| 1750 Mrs. Delany Life & Corr. (1861) II. 607, I cannot promise too much for you till I have finished a plain fringe I am knotting..; as soon as that is finished I will do some sugar-plum for you. |
4. attrib. and Comb., as sugar-plum box; sugar-plum chalk, land dial., land having ‘a thin, short, chalky surface’.
| 1750 W. Ellis Mod. Husbandm. VI. ii. 19, iii. 34 (E.D.S.). 1852 Thackeray Esmond i. iii, Her ladyship's snuff-box and her sugar-plum box. |
Hence ˈsugar-plum v. trans., to reward or pacify with sweetmeats; hence, to pet, cosset.
| 1788 H. Walpole Let. to Mrs. H. More 22 Sept., Instead of being reprimanded (and perhaps immediately after sugar-plum'd) for not learning their Latin..grammar. 1841 Tait's Mag. VIII. 7 At present, pretty dear, she is coaxed and sugar-plumbed through life. |