English

Barley-sugar pillars ("twisted helically")

Noun

barley-sugar ‎(uncountable)

1. attributive form of barley sugar

Adjective

barley-sugar ‎(comparative more barley-sugar, superlative most barley-sugar)

1. very sweet; harmless.
   • c. 1800, Anne Isabella Byron , quoted in Malcolm Elwin, Lord Byron's wife

     I shall write to you tomorrow on a subject which I have not now time to discuss. This I declare now because I like to excite your curiosity, and to delay gratifying it. I am a sweet chicken ! ! ! You ought to think me the most barley-sugar daughter in the creation!

   • 1824, John Scott, John Taylor, The London Magazine, page 126

     In the apartment of the Abate a few pictures remain, but none of first order : one or two Carlo Dolces served to strengthen our opinion of his being one of the most barley-sugar painters of the Italian schools.

   • 1851, The New monthly belle assemblée, page 292

     Well, the little dog barked on furiously, that is for a barley-sugar dog; and, after rolling themselves in the grass to get rid of the load of jam and cream on their clothes, they managed to get up and run on.

2. twisted helically.
   • 1935, Anthony Bertram, The House: A Machine for Living In; a Summary of the Art and Science of Homemaking Considered Functionally

     Chair-backs were very straight and no time was wasted on carving. This severe discipline prepared English craftsmen for their great period. After a slight relapse under Charles II into rather frivolous forms — very barley-sugar, but discreet […]

   • 1963, Radio Astronomy

     Suppose that, initially, the barley-sugar aerials are twisted in such a sense that the polar diagram of each has its maximum north of the zenith.

   • 1988, Robert Milburn, Early Christian Art and Architecture, Univ of California Press (ISBN 9780520074125), page 95

     The barley-sugar columns, carved in spiral channels with alternating bands of vine ornament, exist to this day though moved from their original site.

   • 2008, John Mortimer, Summer's Lease, Penguin UK (ISBN 9780141920795)

     So they left the remains of Fosdyke and walked across the road and through the old church, restored in the eighteenth century, which had barley-sugar pillars and theatrical red curtains backlit by the sun.

   • 2012, Jane Beck, For Better For Worse, Troubador Publishing Ltd (ISBN 9781780882277)

     Kate's living room was simply furnished with a large damask-covered sofa that had seen better days, a folding table with barley sugar legs and a couple of upright chairs.

Synonyms

• (twisted helically): Solomonic