toffee
Americannoun
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toffees
plural
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a brittle or chewy brown candy made of sugar or molasses boiled down with butter, often mixed with nuts.
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British. taffy.
noun
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a sweet made from sugar or treacle boiled with butter, nuts, etc
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informal (preceded by can't) to be incompetent at a specified activity
he can't sing for toffee
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of toffee
First recorded in 1860–65; the earlier variants toughy, tuffy were first recorded in 1825–30 ; southern British dialect form of original northern British dialect taffy ( def. ); further origin uncertain
Compare meaning
How does toffee compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
Toffee is a hard or brittle candy made from butter and sugar. Some candy bars are made by coating toffee in chocolate. Yum! Toffee is often confused with another candy with nearly the exact same ingredients, taffy. The difference is mainly in the candy-making process: taffy is pulled and stretched until it's soft and chewy. Toffee, on the other hand, won't stick in your teeth like taffy, because it is boiled, shaped, and allowed to harden into a delicious, glossy slab.
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.
See Examples For:
McIlroy called his choice of sticky toffee pudding a "crowd pleaser" but said he had had most fun selecting the wine.
From BBC ● Mar. 18, 2026
Over at Nama Ko, dessert is a miso-honey black truffle soft serve with dark chocolate toffee crunch, drizzled with both chocolate and caramel sauces.
From Salon ● May 16, 2024
Slabs of roast pork, skin as brittle and sweet as toffee and bathed in vinegar garlic sauce at Dominican spots in Washington Heights.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 14, 2024
By 1902, when he was 19, Mars was selling toffee chips across rural Minnesota and married his first wife, Ethel.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 9, 2023
“Only not toffee ones. They make me drool.”
From "Coraline" by Neil Gaiman
Today, there's truly something for everyone with fillings such as nut clusters, maple fudge, buttercreams and truffles, molasses chews, toffees and nougats, all types of fruit-studded creams, as well as the classics.
From Salon ● Feb. 14, 2023
The real Quality Street chocolates, toffees and sweets are still made at the same site in Halifax, West Yorkshire, where they were first manufactured in 1936.
From BBC ● Dec. 21, 2021
Sweetshops peppered his boyhood and boyhood writing: lemon sherbets, bootlaces, gobstoppers and toffees; hard-boiled sweets served by boot-faced proprietors.
From The Guardian ● Sep. 13, 2016
In that same room there was a tin that seemed never to run out of toffees in shiny wrappers.
From The New Yorker ● May 7, 2016
“But if I don’t go to work, how will I pay for our toffees this weekend? I want to buy the big tin.”
From "The Bletchley Riddle" by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
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