• Today's Word

Saccharine

🔊 Listen to the word Saccharine

SAK-uh-rin

Definition

(adjective) Excessively sweet or sentimental; sickeningly or insincerely agreeable.

Example

The movie’s saccharine ending felt unearned, wrapping up years of complicated relationships with a neat bow that no one believed.

Word Origin

From Medieval Latin saccharum, meaning “sugar,” itself borrowed from Greek sakkharon, which came from Sanskrit sharkara, meaning “grit or gravel” — referring to the granular texture of raw sugar. The word entered English in the late 17th century first as a noun referring to a sugary substance, and later evolved into an adjective describing anything cloyingly sweet, literal or otherwise. It’s also the root of saccharin, the artificial sweetener discovered in 1879.

Fun Fact

Saccharin — the artificial sweetener that shares the word’s root — was discovered entirely by accident in 1879 when chemist Constantin Fahlberg forgot to wash his hands after a lab experiment and noticed his dinner roll tasted unusually sweet. It went on to become one of the most controversial food additives in history, banned and unbanned multiple times across different countries over the following century. The irony is fitting: something named for sweetness spent most of its existence being viewed with deep suspicion — much like the saccharine sentiment the adjective describes.