Appears in
Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets

By Darra Goldstein

Published 2015

  • About

sweetshop is a British English term for shops selling mostly, though not exclusively, sugar- and chocolate-based confectionery. The word has mildly childish overtones, and the color, sparkle, and glitter of hard candies and foil wrappers, as well as the seemingly endless choice of fruit drops, toffee, licorice, and other sugar-based items, are intensely attractive to children. In practice, such establishments may also sell a range of other items, including ice cream, newspapers, and tobacco. The North American candy store and the French confiserie also display the enchantment of boiled sugar in massed form, as do Turkish shops specializing in lokum, or Turkish delight.