Candy and sweets both mean confectionery made mainly from sugar; candy is the everyday American English word and sweets is the informal British English word for the same treats. If you picture a child at a corner shop, an American child buys candy and a British child buys sweets.
The core difference
Candy and sweets both describe sugar confectionery; the split is American versus British English.
- candy — American English for sweet confectionery made mainly from sugar: The kids traded candy from their trick-or-treat bags.
- sweets — informal British English for the same kind of confectionery: The kids picked out sweets at the corner shop.
How to tell them apart
Candy and sweets cover the same shelf of sugary treats, chocolate, fruit-flavoured chews, boiled sweets and the like, and the choice between them is simply a matter of American versus British English. Candy traces back through Old French sucre candi, or candied sugar, itself traced through Arabic and Persian to a Sanskrit word for a piece of sugar.
Two things worth knowing when the words are used elsewhere: candy can also be a verb, meaning to coat or cook something in sugar syrup until it hardens, as in candied orange peel, and it appears as slang for crack cocaine in some contexts, quite separate from confectionery.
