treacle
[tree-kuh l]
- contrived or unrestrained sentimentality: a movie plot of the most shameless treacle.
- British.
- molasses, especially that which is drained from the vats used in sugar refining.
- Also called golden syrup.a mild mixture of molasses, corn syrup, etc., used in cooking or as a table syrup.
- Pharmacology Obsolete. any of various medicinal compounds, formerly used as antidotes for poison.
Show More
Origin of treacle
1275–1325; Middle English, variant of triacle antidote < Middle French, Old French < Latin thēriaca < Greek thēriakḗ, noun use of feminine of thēriakós concerning wild beasts, equivalent to thērí(on) wild beast (thḗr wild beast + -ion diminutive suffix) + -akos -ac
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for treacly
Contemporary Examples
And we all remember good-but-overpraised songs like If I Had a Hammer and the treacly classic Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Here was this anti-war holiday demoted to treacly sentimentality.
Mother’s Day 2013: Gloria Steinem, Erica Jong & Writers Thank Their MomsGloria Steinem, Erica Jong, Fay Weldon, Dalma Heyn, Joyce Maynard
May 12, 2013
It avoids that treacly, touchy-feely ground on which Democrats so love to walk.
Historical Examples
He watched the treacly pour of the yellow fog thickening about him.
PatsyS. R. Crockett
And he set the sail, and Eliza steered as well as she could in her treacly state.
Oswald Bastable and OthersEdith Nesbit
He takes a pellet of the black, treacly stuff on the end of a knitting-needle.
From Sea to SeaRudyard Kipling
"I haven't had any," she said, grasping the teapot and pouring a treacly liquid into a cup.
Simon the JesterWilliam J. Locke
It should make an end of the treacly farce which bandies between hopelessly parted colleagues the title 'right hon. friend.'
treacle
- Also called: black treacle British a dark viscous syrup obtained during the refining of sugar
- British another name for golden syrup
- anything sweet and cloying
- obsolete any of various preparations used as an antidote to poisoning
Show More
Word Origin
C14: from Old French triacle, from Latin thēriaca antidote to poison
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for treacly
treacle
n.
mid-14c., "medicinal compound, antidote for poison," from Old French triacle "antidote" (c.1200), from Vulgar Latin *triacula, from Latin theriaca, from Greek theriake (antidotos) "antidote for poisonous wild animals," from fem. of theriakos "of a wild animal," from therion "wild animal," diminutive of ther (genitive theros) "wild animal," from PIE root *ghwer- "wild" (see fierce).
Sense of "molasses" is first recorded 1690s; that of "anything too sweet or sentimental" is from 1771. The connection may be from the use of molasses as a laxative, or its use to disguise the bad taste of medicine.
Show More
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper