Containing or tasting of sugar; sweet. Can also describe something excessively sentimental or artificially pleasant in a cloying way.
From Middle English sugre (sugar) plus the suffix -y. Sugar comes from Arabic as-sukkar, which derived from Sanskrit śarkarā meaning 'ground or candied sugar', originally meaning 'gravel' or 'grit'.
The metaphorical use of 'sugary' to mean overly sweet in personality mirrors how our taste preferences translate to social judgments. Interestingly, the Sanskrit root originally meant 'grit' - showing how sugar went from being rare and precious to common enough for negative metaphors!
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