[f. SUGAR sb. + PLUM sb.]
1. A small round or oval sweetmeat, made of boiled sugar and variously flavored and colored; 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. trans. 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 the 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. trans. Guazzo’s Art Conversation, 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. C. 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 kpotting…; 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 Sugar-plum v. trans., to reward or pacify with sweetmeats; hence, to pet, cosset.
1788. H. Walpole, Lett. 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.
