{
    "id": 1070582,
    "title": "What people call sweets around Britain",
    "slug": "what-people-call-sweets-around-britain",
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    "url": "https://sweeties.net/wiki/what-people-call-sweets-around-britain/",
    "modified": "2026-09-26T13:03:05+01:00",
    "excerpt": "Sweets, sweeties, spice, kets or lollies? What you call sweets depends on where you grew up. Britain's regional words for sweets, and a few from abroad.",
    "content_text": "Everyone in Britain knows what a sweet is, but not everyone calls it one. The word you grew up with often says where you grew up. Here are some of the regional words for sweets, with where they are recorded.\nSweeties in Scotland\nIn Scotland, sweets are sweeties. The Scottish National Dictionary records sweetie, meaning a sweet, confection, sugar lozenge or caramel, from 1782. A sweetie shop is a sweet shop, a sweetie bottle is a glass jar for sweets, and a sweetie man was a confectioner or sweet seller. A sweetie wife was a woman who sold sweets, and the phrase came to mean a gossip, often a gossipy man. It is also the word behind our own name.\nSpice in Yorkshire\nIn Yorkshire dialect, sweets are spice. Wiktionary's example gives the flavour: going down to the spice shop to see what they have in stock. Another northern word recorded for sweets is spoggs.\nKets in the North East\nIn parts of northern England, sweets are kets. Wiktionary records ket for sweets in Northumbria and on Wearside. In older northern dialect, the same word also meant carrion or rubbish, so a bag of kets could be sweets or something much less appealing depending on who was speaking.\nSpanish and kali\nNorthern England has its own names for particular sweets too. Liquorice is colloquially called Spanish, and kali is the name for a sherbet like powder. See why is liquorice called Spanish? and why is sherbet called kali?\nLollies and candy abroad\nTravel further and the words change again. In the UK and Ireland a lolly is a lollipop or an ice lolly, but in Australia and New Zealand lollies means sweets of any kind. In the United States, sweets are candy. And lolly has another meaning in Britain altogether: slang for money.\nSherbet, but not as you know it\nEven familiar words can surprise. In parts of both the UK and Australia, sherbet has long been slang for an alcoholic drink, especially beer, so a few sherbets down the pub means a few pints.\nWhatever you call them, you will find old sweet shop names in our pick and mix. For the names of the sweets themselves, see old fashioned sweets from A to Z.",
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