[Ads-l] Possible WOTY Candidate: Sugar/Sugaring

Baker, John JBAKER at STRADLEY.COM
Sun Dec 28 16:11:43 UTC 2014


"Sugaring" and the "sugar" lifestyle refer to the relationships between sugar daddies and sugar babies, especially as formalized using websites such as SeekingArrangement.com.  

I didn't bother searching for "sugar," but I did look for early examples of "sugaring."  The earliest example I see is a blog post comment from 3/31/2009, at https://www.seekingarrangement.com/blog/sugar-daddy-messages/:  "Everyone seems to be the usual ups and downs of the Sugar-ing."  

The next example, this time without the hyphen, is from another blog post comment, on 7/28/2009, at https://www.seekingarrangement.com/blog/can-a-sugar-daddy-give-too-much/:  " Maybe it's time for a blog about "Sugaring on a Budget" - also known as "all that and a bag of chips.""

The term came to wider attention when the phenomenon was featured on the premiere episode of This Is Life with Lisa Ling on CNN on 9/28/2014.  There were at least three promotional discussions of the upcoming program on 9/25/2014, each of which emphasized that "sugaring" was a new or unfamiliar term to the speaker.


John Baker

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list