The word candy emerged in English in the early fifteenth century, a few decades before the appearance of sweetmeat, another word that refers to a wide variety of sugary morsels. Candy and sweetmeat were originally distinguished in so far as candy tended to refer only to flavoured pieces of crystallized sugar, while sweetmeat could also include glazed fruit, sugary pastries, and ginger-bread. By the eighteenth century the two words had moved closer together in meaning, but had moved farther apart geographically: sweetmeat, or its shortened form, sweet, came to be the usual British name for such confections, while candy came to be the usual North American word. In origin, the word candy derives ultimately from a Sanskrit word meaning to break. From this word, the people of ancient India, who were the original writers of Sanskrit, formed the word khanda, meaning broken piece, which was applied to little chunks of sugar broken from a larger block of crystallized sugar. This word was adopted by Arabic as qandah, and was bestowed by the Arabs on pieces of sugar flavoured with ginger, almond, or fruit extracts. The Arabic qandah then became the Italian and French candi, finally adopted by English as candy.
To protect by means of boiling in a sugary solution and enabling a saccharine layer to adhere to the comestible, typically sections of fruit that have undergone this process.
Candy is a term that refers to all types of confections, including chocolates, fudge, toffees, marzipan, nougats, candied fruit, and more. It can be difficult to classify candies into specific groups, as there is often overlap between them. Some of the main types of homemade candies include fondants and creams, both cooked and uncooked, marzipan, fudge, toffee and butterscotch, caramel and nougat, as well as a miscellaneous group that includes marshmallows, Turkish delight, and truffles. While many of these candies can be successfully made at home in small quantities, others such as chocolates are better left to professional chocolatiers.