sugarplum
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of sugarplum
First recorded in 1600–10; sugar + plum (in the sense “small, rounded mass (of hardened sugar approximately the size of a plum)”
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The residents, including artist David Hockney, told Kensington and Chelsea borough council that Hamilton would be "destroying nature" if he cut down a sugarplum tree outside his home.
From BBC • Apr. 27, 2022
But the Senate is the sugarplum fairy dancing in Democrats’ heads.
From Fox News • Aug. 5, 2020
William Styron, reviewing it in The New York Review of Books, called it a “droll little sugarplum of a tale.”
From New York Times • Jul. 16, 2018
Even if you have more in common with a wooden nutcracker than a sugarplum fairy, you can still trip the light fantastic — emphasis on tripping — during a drop-in lesson at Ballet Fantastique .
From Washington Post • Nov. 8, 2017
I’d flex and leap, and bow and sweep; a sugarplum, a swan, a maiden, a doll.
From "Wintergirls" by Laurie Halse Anderson
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.
