Word.ws English Dictionary

confectionary

confectionary adjective: relating to, or of the nature of confections or their production. Also the dated form of confectionery.

Adjective

confectionary (not comparable)

  1. Relating to, or of the nature of confections or their production.
    • confectionary wares
  2. Prepared as a confection.
    • Thy morning bounties ere I left my home, / The biscuit, or confectionary plum;1798, William Cowper, On Receipt of My Mother's Picture, line 60

Noun

confectionary (countable and uncountable, plural confectionaries)

  1. A candy, sweetmeat; a confection.
    • After the dishes of meat were removed, a dessert of Arabian fruits, confectionaries and sweetmeats was served: among the latter was the date bread.1787, Miss Tully, “February 10, 1787”, in Letters Written During a Ten Years' Residence at the Court of Tripoli, published 1819, page 285
  2. (obsolete) A place where confections are manufactured, stored; a confectory.
  3. (obsolete) One who makes confections; a confectioner.
    • And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cookes, and to be bakers.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 1 Samuel 8:13

Also used as

confectionary is also the dated form of confectionery.

confectionary is also the archaic form of confectionery.

Forms of confectionary

pluralconfectionaries

Origin of confectionary

From Late Latin cōnfectiōnārius (“one who prepares things by means of ingredients”), from Latin cōnfectiō (“preparing, producing”). See confection. By surface analysis, confection + -ary.

Questions about confectionary

What does confectionary mean?
Confectionary means relating to, or of the nature of confections or their production.
What part of speech is confectionary?
Confectionary can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near confectionary in the dictionary

  1. confect
  2. confected
  3. confecting
  4. confection
  5. confectionaries
  6. confectionary
  7. confectioned
  8. confectioner
  9. confectioner's
  10. confectioner's cream
  11. confectioner's creams

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: confectionary (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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