Syrup

How to spell syrup

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce syrup

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does syrup mean?

1. nounA thick, sweet liquid made by dissolving sugar in water or boiling down a plant juice, used in cooking, drinks, or medicine.

Syrup in a sentence

• She poured warm syrup over the pancakes before serving breakfast.

• The cough medicine came as a thick cherry syrup in a brown bottle.

Where does syrup come from?

Language of origin: Arabic

The word travelled a long way before settling into English. Its ultimate source is the Arabic sharab, meaning 'a drink' or 'beverage', from the verb shariba, 'to drink'. Medieval Latin reshaped this into siropus or syrupus, and Old French passed it on as sirop, the name for a thick sweet medicinal liquid. English took it up in the late 1300s, originally in the context of medicine, where sugary preparations were used to make bitter remedies easier to swallow. The same Arabic root also gave English 'sherbet' and the cocktail term 'shrub', so the family is more sociable than it first appears. The tricky y in the modern spelling reflects the Latinised form syrupus rather than the everyday short i sound, which is exactly why writers so often reach for an i.

How the word is built

• syrup (single root, from Arabic sharab meaning a drink; note the y where many expect an i, and the single r and single p)