short sweetening

short sweetening (uncountable)

1. (Southern US, Midland US) Sugar.
   • 1898, Ben LaBree, editor, Camp Fires of the Confederacy, page 405:

     He was a little taller than a hogshead of sugar, but not quite so round, consequently when his head and hands were at the bottom of the hogshead, into which he had slipped while surreptitiously filling his haversack with short sweetening, his feet hanging over the top, gave unimpeachable evidence of his whereabouts.

   • 1959, Leonard W. Roberts, “Jim Couch, His Family Story”, in Up Cutshin & down Greasy: folkways of a Kentucky mountain family, page 8:

     Made our molasses into long sweetening and tapped the sugartrees for short sweetening.

   • 1986, Elizabeth Silverthorne, Plantation life in Texas:

     Sorghum and sugarcane provided molasses and sugar. The slaves called syrup "long sweetening" and sugar "short sweetening." Their sweetening was more often long than short.

   • 1999, Rhoda C. Ellison, Bibb County, Alabama: The First Hundred Years, page 51:

     Even at the end of the century, a country hostess might inquire, on serving coffee, if the guest preferred "long or short sweetening."

• long sweetening