candied

1. 1
   adjective

   Coated or encrusted with a layer of sugar.

   Candied walnuts add a sweet crunch to the autumn salad.

   The pastry chef garnished the dessert with candied violets.

   Similarsugared, glazed, sugar-coated

   Note

   Here the sugar stays on the surface as a crust or glaze over nuts, petals or seeds, and the crunch is on the outside. Tell it apart from the preserved-fruit meaning, where syrup works all the way through until the fruit turns translucent. Candied walnuts are coated; candied peel is soaked through. One describes a shell, the other a transformation.

2. 2
   adjective

   Preserved by being cooked in sugar or syrup until the fruit turns translucent.

   Candied citron is a key ingredient in traditional panettone.

   The recipe calls for a generous handful of candied peel.

   Similarcrystallized

3. 3
   adjectivefiguratively

   Pleasing or flattering, in the way sweet, smooth words are designed to win someone over.

   The senator's candied rhetoric concealed an empty agenda.

   Beneath his candied flattery lay genuine contempt.

   Similarhoneyed, sugary, flattering

   Note

   Here sweetness becomes a judgment on speech. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the prince scorns "the candied tongue" that licks "absurd pomp," and the word has kept that edge. It pairs most naturally with words for speech, such as tongue, words, rhetoric and praise. It usually implies that the sweetness is calculated to win favor, so calling someone's compliments candied is seldom a compliment.

4. 4
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of candy.

   The chef candied the cherries himself for the holiday menu.

   We candied chestnuts over several days using a heavy sugar syrup.

   Note

   One form serves two verbs. Used transitively, a cook candies fruit or nuts in sugar syrup. Used intransitively, a thing candies by itself as sugar crystals form in or on it, or as it sets into a candylike mass. The same spelling also works as the adjective behind the sugar-coated sense, which compares as more candied and most candied.

   The honey had candied in the jar over the winter.

   Left too long on the heat, the syrup candied into a hard mass.

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