a chewy candy made of sugar or corn syrup boiled down with butter or oil, pulled or stretched back and forth to incorporate air bubbles, then rolled, twisted, and cut into pieces.
Informal. flattery.
a chewy sweet made of brown sugar or molasses and butter, boiled and then pulled so that it becomes glossy
a less common term for toffee
First recorded in 1815–25; northern English dialect variant of toffee; see origin at toffee ( def. )
Taffy is a very sweet, chewy candy. You can find brightly colored boxes of taffy in tourist gift shops. Taffy is made by repeatedly stretching a mixture of boiled sugar, butter, and flavoring. The stretching, or "pulling" of taffy is what gives it a light, chewy consistency. In coastal towns, it's usually called "salt water taffy," a name that was coined in Atlantic City, New Jersey in the 1920s. While salt is often an ingredient in salt water taffy, it doesn't actually contain any salt water.
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The term describes how the crust stretches and thins in the middle, similar to the narrowed "neck" that forms when a piece of saltwater taffy is pulled apart.
From Science Daily • Apr. 25, 2026
Their specific offerings include pretzels, caramels, chocolate, taffy and cupcakes... just to name a few.
From Salon • Oct. 15, 2024
Everything from Mexican pop to European experimentalism was strained, boiled, compressed and stretched into addictive instrumental taffy.
From Los Angeles Times • May 8, 2024
“About 750 million years ago, the supercontinent began to thin and pull apart like warm taffy because of expansion of the continental crust,” Sandra H.B.
From National Geographic • Oct. 13, 2023
“Taking something real and sort of stretching it out like a piece of taffy into a thing that’s true but distorted. You know. Like old lady Henley’s face-lift.”
From "Missing May" by Cynthia Rylant
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
