sugar

The word “sugar” means a sweet crystalline substance, usually made from sugar cane or sugar beet, used to sweeten food and drink. In plain terms, the sweet substance you add to food and drinks, or any similar sweet carbohydrate.

“Sugar” is pronounced SHUU-guh (/ˈʃʊɡɚ/ in IPA).

Here is “sugar” used in a sentence: “He takes two spoonfuls of sugar in his tea.”

Depending on how it is used, “sugar” can be a noun and a verb.

The word “sugar” comes from Old French. Traced back through Old French çucre and Old Italian zucchero to Arabic sukkar, itself borrowed from Persian and ultimately Sanskrit sharkara. The same root gives us the word "jaggery.".

“Sugar” is a fairly common word in modern English, usually learned at around the A1 level.

“Sugar” has 3 distinct senses listed in this dictionary. The most common is: a sweet crystalline substance, usually made from sugar cane or sugar beet, used to sweeten food and drink.

Common types include granulated, the standard white sugar; caster, which is finer and good for baking; icing sugar, powdered for frosting; and demerara or brown sugar, which keeps some molasses for a richer flavour. There are also raw sugars, and forms named by source, like cane sugar or beet sugar. Most table sugar is sucrose.

Sugar is a natural sweet substance, usually sucrose from cane or beet, that adds both sweetness and calories. Sweetener is a broader term covering anything that sweetens, including artificial and low-calorie substitutes such as aspartame or stevia. So all sugar is a sweetener, but not every sweetener is sugar.

Sugar is not toxic, and the body uses it for energy, but health guidance advises limiting added sugar. Eating a lot is linked to tooth decay, weight gain, and a raised risk of type 2 diabetes. The natural sugars in fruit and milk come packaged with nutrients and are generally less of a concern.