treacle

treacle [tree-kuh l] ExamplesWord Origin noun

1. contrived or unrestrained sentimentality: a movie plot of the most shameless treacle.
2. British.
   1. molasses, especially that which is drained from the vats used in sugar refining.
   2. Also called golden syrup.a mild mixture of molasses, corn syrup, etc., used in cooking or as a table syrup.
3. Pharmacology Obsolete. any of various medicinal compounds, formerly used as antidotes for poison.

Origin of treacle 1275–1325; Middle English, variant of triacle antidote Middle French, Old French Latin thēriaca Greek thēriakḗ, noun use of feminine of thēriakós concerning wild beasts, equivalent to thērí(on) wild beast (thḗr wild beast + -ion diminutive suffix) + -akos -ac Related formstrea·cly [tree-klee] /ˈtri kli/, adjective Examples from the Web for treacly Contemporary Examples of treacly

And we all remember good-but-overpraised songs like If I Had a Hammer and the treacly classic Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

The Death of ‘Stalin’s Songbird’

Michael Moynihan

January 29, 2014

Here was this anti-war holiday demoted to treacly sentimentality.

Mother’s Day 2013: Gloria Steinem, Erica Jong & Writers Thank Their Moms

Gloria Steinem, Erica Jong, Fay Weldon, Dalma Heyn, Joyce Maynard

May 12, 2013

It avoids that treacly, touchy-feely ground on which Democrats so love to walk.

Michael Tomasky: With Joe Biden’s Speech, The Democrats Finally Man Up

Michael Tomasky

April 28, 2012

Historical Examples of treacly

He watched the treacly pour of the yellow fog thickening about him.

Patsy

S. R. Crockett

And he set the sail, and Eliza steered as well as she could in her treacly state.

Oswald Bastable and Others

Edith Nesbit

He takes a pellet of the black, treacly stuff on the end of a knitting-needle.

From Sea to Sea

Rudyard Kipling

“I haven’t had any,” she said, grasping the teapot and pouring a treacly liquid into a cup.

Simon the Jester

William J. Locke

It should make an end of the treacly farce which bandies between hopelessly parted colleagues the title ‘right hon. friend.’

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 105, July 8th 1893

Various

British Dictionary definitions for treacly treacle noun

1. Also called: black treacle British a dark viscous syrup obtained during the refining of sugar
2. British another name for golden syrup
3. anything sweet and cloying
4. obsolete any of various preparations used as an antidote to poisoning

Derived Formstreacly, adjectivetreacliness, nounWord Origin for treacle C14: from Old French triacle, from Latin thēriaca antidote to poison Word Origin and History for treacly treacle n.

mid-14c., “medicinal compound, antidote for poison,” from Old French triacle “antidote” (c.1200), from Vulgar Latin *triacula, from Latin theriaca, from Greek theriake (antidotos) “antidote for poisonous wild animals,” from fem. of theriakos “of a wild animal,” from therion “wild animal,” diminutive of ther (genitive theros) “wild animal,” from PIE root *ghwer- “wild” (see fierce).

Sense of “molasses” is first recorded 1690s; that of “anything too sweet or sentimental” is from 1771. The connection may be from the use of molasses as a laxative, or its use to disguise the bad taste of medicine.