short sweetening

short sweetening noun: sugar.

Noun

short sweetening (uncountable)

(Southern US) Sugar.
- He was a little taller than a hogshead of sugar, but not quite so round, consequently when his head and hands were at the bottom of the hogshead, into which he had slipped while surreptitiously filling his haversack with short sweetening, his feet hanging over the top, gave unimpeachable evidence...1898, Ben LaBree, editor, Camp Fires of the Confederacy, page 405
- Made our molasses into long sweetening and tapped the sugartrees for short sweetening.1959, Leonard W. Roberts, “Jim Couch, His Family Story”, in Up Cutshin & down Greasy: folkways of a Kentucky mountain family, page 8

The slaves called syrup "long sweetening" and sugar "short sweetening." Their sweetening was more often long than short.1986, Elizabeth Silverthorne, Plantation life in Texas:
Even at the end of the century, a country hostess might inquire, on serving coffee, if the guest preferred "long or short sweetening."1999, Rhoda C. Ellison, Bibb County, Alabama: The First Hundred Years, page 51:

What does short sweetening mean?: Short sweetening means sugar.
How do you use short sweetening in a sentence?: The slaves called syrup "long sweetening" and sugar "short sweetening." Their sweetening was more often long than short.
What part of speech is short sweetening?: Short sweetening is a noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: short sweetening (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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