An old word for a sweet thing to eat: a candy, a piece of crystallised fruit, a small sugary cake — anything made of sugar or preserved in it. It covers a wide range, from boiled sweets to nuts in honey to fruit in syrup, so it is more a category than a particular food. This word is not used in ordinary modern English. You meet it in old books, in fairy tales, in history writing, and in translations describing the sweets of other countries — Indian and Middle Eastern sweets in particular are often called sweetmeats in English writing, which is where a learner today is most likely to see it. Today people say sweets in Britain and candy in America. Reading it makes a sentence feel old or far away, which is exactly why writers still reach for it.

（舊時說法）甜食、蜜餞、糖果一類。寫印度、中東點心的英文文章常用這個字，讀起來有古味，現在日常英文說 sweets（英）或 candy（美）。