a sweet usu crystalline substance that consists essentially of sucrose, is colourless or white when pure, tending to brown when less refined, is obtained esp from sugarcane or sugar beet, and is important as a source of dietary carbohydrate, and is used and as a sweetener and preservative of other foods
any of a class of water-soluble carbohydrates that are of varying sweetness, including and include glucose, ribose, and sucrose
chiefly NAmer, informal a term of endearment
slang, dated heroin, LSD, or any similar drug
Middle English sucre via medieval Latin zuccarum, Old Italian zucchero, Arabic sukkar, and Persian shakar from Sanskrit śarkarā. The history of this word reflects the route by which the product was originally transmitted to England: from India to Persia, then through Arab territories to Italy and thence to the rest of Europe. Sugarcane, the only commercial source of sugar until extraction from sugar beet was developed in the early 19th cent., may well have originated in India; in any case, the production of sugar began in India, by about 3000 bc, and the ultimate source of the word is a Sanskrit word probably originally meaning ‘grit’ or ‘gravel’, reflecting the granular appearance of sugar. From India, sugar spread both eastwards and westwards. To the west, the major region of early sugarcane cultivation was Khūzistān in Persia. Arab traders, often acting as intermediaries between India and Europe, developed the art of sugar refining and introduced sugar in the Middle Ages to Egypt, Italy, and southern Spain. Venice became the European centre of the sugar trade; a Venetian invented loaf sugar, and in 1319 100,000lb of sugar was shipped to London by a Venetian merchant. The earliest references to sugar in England date from the late 13th cent.; early English records are very variable in spelling but most seem to reflect the French form sucre, itself a derivative of the Italian zucchero