candify

candify

English

Etymology

candy +‎ -fy

Verb

candify (third-person singular simple present candifies, present participle candifying, simple past and past participle candified)

1. (transitive, archaic) To candy.
   • 1872, Susan Coolidge, What Katy Did

     […] seven little pies—molasses pies, baked in saucers—each with a brown top and crisp candified edge, which tasted like toffy and lemon-peel, and all sorts of good things mixed up together.

   • 1875, Bee-keeper's Magazine

     The candifying or granulating of extracted honey has also been a hinderance and great draw back to its introduction and use.

2. (transitive, figuratively, sometimes derogatory) To make sweet or saccharine at the expense of serious meaning.
   • 1994, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Subcommittee on Public Lands, National Parks, and Forests, Workshop and hearing on New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park

     Jazz was not always an accepted music, and, of course, today we have the problem of remaining faithful to the cultural roots of jazz, not just candifying, Disneyfying the music.

   • 1998, John D. Seelye, Memory's nation: the place of Plymouth Rock, page 21:

     They have become democratized into an item of popular consumption, perhaps a more gritty comestible than the candified menu served up in Disneyland's version of the American past...

   • 2008 March 15, Bernard Holland, “Ravel: A Bit Wicked, a Bit Nostalgic”, in New York Times‎:

     A minor misfortune of Ravel’s legacy is the relative obscurity of his best piano pieces and the prominence of their candified orchestral versions.