Meaning & use
jaggery
Last updated
Meanings
noununcountable
A dark, unrefined sugar made by boiling sugarcane juice or palm sap until it becomes solid.
Grammar: No plural and no 'a': say 'some jaggery', not 'a jaggery'.
Patterns
- jaggery is made from something
- a piece of jaggery
The recipe calls for jaggery instead of white sugar.
In many Indian homes, jaggery is added to tea for a deeper, caramel-like sweetness.
She broke off a small piece of jaggery and ate it with peanuts.
nouncountable
A block or piece of this sugar.
Grammar: When you mean a physical lump or block, it can be countable: 'a jaggery' or 'two jaggeries'.
Patterns
- a jaggery
- jaggeries
The market sells round jaggeries wrapped in banana leaf.
He bought two jaggeries for the festival sweets.
Common combinations
- palm jaggery
- Palm jaggery has a smoky flavor that works well in desserts.
- cane jaggery
- Cane jaggery is made from the juice of crushed sugarcane.
- jaggery powder
- Stir jaggery powder into the batter until it dissolves.
- a lump of jaggery
- He dropped a lump of jaggery into the boiling milk.
Synonyms and how they differ
- gur
- A South Asian term for the same product; it is common in Indian English but less known elsewhere.
- panela
- The Latin American equivalent; use it when writing about that region rather than South Asia.
- muscovado
- A softer, moist brown sugar; similar in color but produced differently and usually sold as a sugar, not a solid block.
Commonly confused: jaggery or sugar?
jaggery vs sugar
Sugar is the general word for the refined sweetener; jaggery is a specific unrefined type.
Practice
Choose the sentence that uses 'jaggery' correctly.
Choose one answer.
'Jaggery' is uncountable when it means the substance, so 'some jaggery' is correct. 'A jaggery' and 'jaggeries' are only used for countable blocks or pieces, which do not fit here.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “jaggery”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.