arm candy

American  

Slang.

1. a very attractive person who accompanies someone on a date, as at a public event, but is not romantically involved with that person.

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Etymology

Origin of arm candy

1990–95

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

arm candy

If an equally attractive woman had worn a shirt that read, "It's not easy being my husband's arm candy," it would have come across as bragging, no?

From Salon ● Mar. 30, 2023

The music informed fashion and movies and defined how Generation X presented itself; it also moved rock away from hair metal’s depiction of women as bikini-clad arm candy.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 23, 2021

But if many of Britney’s past flames suggested lapses in her self-esteem, Asghari—chiseled, sensibly bearded, impossibly handsome—is the arm candy of a woman more self-possessed than ever.

From Slate ● Sep. 24, 2018

They have been treated like fakes and posers and interlopers and arm candy.

From The Verge ● Dec. 21, 2017

It is a superior thriller, tense and twisty, and Cranston is predictably excellent, but Kruger is sharp and spirited, more than holding her own in a role that could easily have just been arm candy.

From The Guardian ● Sep. 11, 2016