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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
treacle
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
apple/treacle/jam etc tart
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
tart
▪ As he took it off he remembered the sausage and treacle tart in his pocket.
▪ They were buying Eccles cakes and treacle tart and currant buns and iced tarts with bright-red cherries on top.
▪ He'd left his sausage and the square of treacle tart she'd put out for his pudding.
▪ He hoped she wouldn't find the sausage and the treacle tart.
▪ If preferred the lemon treacle tart can be completely cooked a day ahead and reheated gently just before serving.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ It is a socially conscious film that does not turn into treacle.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ As he took it off he remembered the sausage and treacle tart in his pocket.
▪ But it's like digging in treacle - you get nowhere.
▪ Her hair and spectacles were plastered in white treacle.
▪ It was like wading through treacle just to order a meal.
▪ The output is an evil treacle, black and vile.
▪ They pour into the backstage car park like expensive treacle and come to a halt at the crack of a whip.
▪ They were buying Eccles cakes and treacle tart and currant buns and iced tarts with bright-red cherries on top.
▪ This has been a duff year for him: the runs have flowed like treacle, and Dame Fortune has turned sour.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Treacle

Treacle \Trea"cle\ (tr[=e]"k'l), n. [OE. triacle a sovereign remedy, theriac, OF. triacle, F. th['e]riaque (cf. Pr. triacla, tiriaca, Sp. & It. triaca, teriaca), L. theriaca an antidote against the bite of poisonous animals, Gr. ?, fr. ? of wild or venomous beasts, fr. qhri`on a beast, a wild beast, dim. of qh`r a beast. Cf. Theriac.]

  1. (Old Med.) A remedy against poison. See Theriac, 1.

    We kill the viper, and make treacle of him.
    --Jer. Taylor.

  2. A sovereign remedy; a cure. [Obs.]

    Christ which is to every harm treacle.
    --Chaucer.

  3. Molasses; sometimes, specifically, the molasses which drains from the sugar-refining molds, and which is also called sugarhouse molasses.

    Note: In the United States molasses is the common name; in England, treacle.

  4. A saccharine fluid, consisting of the inspissated juices or decoctions of certain vegetables, as the sap of the birch, sycamore, and the like.

    Treacle mustard (Bot.), a name given to several species of the cruciferous genus Erysimum, especially the Erysimum cheiranthoides, which was formerly used as an ingredient in Venice treacle, or theriac.

    Treacle water, a compound cordial prepared in different ways from a variety of ingredients, as hartshorn, roots of various plants, flowers, juices of plants, wines, etc., distilled or digested with Venice treacle. It was formerly regarded as a medicine of great virtue.
    --Nares.

    Venice treacle. (Old Med.) Same as Theriac, 1.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
treacle

mid-14c., "medicinal compound, antidote for poison," from Old French triacle "antidote, cure for snake-bite" (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).\n

\nSense of "molasses" is first recorded 1690s (the connection may be from the use of molasses as a laxative, or its use to disguise the bad taste of medicine); that of "anything too sweet or sentimental" is from 1771. Related: Treacly.

Wiktionary
treacle

n. 1 (context obsolete English) An antidote for poison; theriac. 2 (cx obsolete figurative English) Any all-powerful curative; a general remedy, a cure-all. 3 (context chiefly British English) A syrupy byproduct of sugar refining; molasses or golden syrup. 4 cloying sentimental speech.

WordNet
treacle
  1. n. a pale cane syrup [syn: golden syrup]

  2. an expression that is excessively sweet and sentimental [syn: mush]

Wikipedia
Treacle

Treacle is any uncrystallised syrup made during the refining of sugar. The most common forms of treacle are golden syrup, a pale variety, and a darker variety known as black treacle. Black treacle, or molasses, has a distinctively strong, slightly bitter flavour, and a richer colour than golden syrup. Golden syrup treacle is a common sweetener and condiment in British cookery, found in such dishes as treacle tart and treacle sponge pudding.

Usage examples of "treacle".

Lancashire fig pies made of dried figs with sugar and treacle are eaten beforehand in Lent.

Gingerbread made with brown treacle and grated ginger may be eaten with zest, and reliance.

Parliament Square, which was gridlocked in three directions with the fourth inching along at the speed of cold treacle.

His master seemed to have a great deal of affection for obscure magicians with obscurer names, and Fitzgibbon, Treacle, Hooms, and Gallimaufry were avoided only with difficulty.

Venice treacle, or triacle, was a famous antidote in the middle ages to all animal poisons.

She could be at a bonfire night party in an ancient Berber jacket, cutting up parkin and treacle toffee for my friends, pulling charred potatoes out of the fire embers with hair all tousled and nose just the right shade of red from the cold November air one day, and the next she would be in cashmere and pearls, hair in a chignon, taking tea with Lady Horley.

The dishes had names like Slumgullet, Boiled Eels, Lob Scouse, Wet Nellies, Slumpie and Treacle Billy - good, solid stuff that stuck to the ribs and made it hard to get up out of the seat.

Xhandarre had its own equivalents, but they tended to taste of mud or treacle.

Substantial, wholesome, and clean--though generated by a wet, helpless creature having no personal charms, and which, having passed the phase of life in which it enjoyed the gift of locomotion, has become a plant-like fixture to one spot--the gas mingles with other diffusions of the reef, recalling villanous salt-petre and sheepdips and brimstone and treacle to the stimulation of the mental faculties generally.

Long seconds drew out, slow as treacle, and Craig inched forward, knowing that the Shana must be working towards where he had left Sally-Anne.

I felt as though absorbent cotton encased me, as though I were moving through treacle, thick dust .

As the material spread, it thickened into a colloidal gel that turned many cubic meters of sea water into salt treacle.

This Treacle Tom to whom reference has been made had been absent from his usual wild and woolly haunts in the land of counties capalleens for some time previous to that (he was, in fact, in the habit of frequenting common lodginghouses where he slept in a nude state, hailfellow with meth, in strange men's cots) but on racenight, blotto after divers tots of hell fire, red biddy, bull dog, blue ruin and creeping jenny, Eglandine's choicest herbage, supplied by the Duck and Doggies, the Galopping Primrose, Brigid Brewster's, the Cock, the Postboy's Horn, the Little Old Man's and All Swell That Aimswell, the Cup and the Stirrup, he sought his wellwarmed leababobed in a housingroom Abide With Oneanother at Block W.

Mr Giffard and Stephen were fairly well acquainted - well enough, in any case, for Giffard's initial embarrassment to persuade Stephen that this was not an ordinary visit nor a request for the loan of a carboy of Venice treacle or a hundredweight of portable soup and some lint.

Aunt Fanny had baked new scones for them, and had made a ginger cake with black treacle.