barley-sugar

barley-sugar (countable and uncountable, plural barley-sugars)

1. attributive formal of barley sugar

barley-sugar (comparative more barley-sugar, superlative most barley-sugar)

1. very sweet; harmless.
   • c. 1800, Anne Isabella Byron, quoted in Malcolm Elwin, Lord Byron's wife

     I shall write to you tomorrow on a subject which I have not now time to discuss. This I declare now because I like to excite your curiosity, and to delay gratifying it. I am a sweet chicken ! ! ! You ought to think me the most barley-sugar daughter in the creation!

   • 1824, John Scott, John Taylor, The London Magazine, page 126

     In the apartment of the Abate a few pictures remain, but none of first order : one or two Carlo Dolces served to strengthen our opinion of his being one of the most barley-sugar painters of the Italian schools.

   • 1851, The New monthly belle assemblée, page 292

     Well, the little dog barked on furiously, that is for a barley-sugar dog; and, after rolling themselves in the grass to get rid of the load of jam and cream on their clothes, they managed to get up and run on.

2. twisted helically.
   • 1935, Anthony Bertram, The House: A Machine for Living In; a Summary of the Art and Science of Homemaking Considered Functionally

     Chair-backs were very straight and no time was wasted on carving. This severe discipline prepared English craftsmen for their great period. After a slight relapse under Charles II into rather frivolous forms — very barley-sugar, but discreet […]

   • 1963, Radio Astronomy

     Suppose that, initially, the barley-sugar aerials are twisted in such a sense that the polar diagram of each has its maximum north of the zenith.

   • 1988, Robert Milburn, Early Christian Art and Architecture, Univ of California Press →ISBN, page 95

     The barley-sugar columns, carved in spiral channels with alternating bands of vine ornament, exist to this day though moved from their original site.

   • 2008, John Mortimer, Summer's Lease, Penguin UK →ISBN

     So they left the remains of Fosdyke and walked across the road and through the old church, restored in the eighteenth century, which had barley-sugar pillars and theatrical red curtains backlit by the sun.

   • 2012, Jane Beck, For Better For Worse, Troubador Publishing Ltd →ISBN

     Kate's living room was simply furnished with a large damask-covered sofa that had seen better days, a folding table with barley sugar legs and a couple of upright chairs.

• (twisted helically): Solomonic