means A chewy, intensely flavored candy made from the sweet extract of the licorice plant's root, available in black or red varieties that people tend to love or hate.

from From the Greek 'glykyrrhiza,' literally 'sweet root' — 'glykys' (sweet) plus 'rhiza' (root), the same 'rhiza' you meet in 'rhizome.' Latin softened it to 'liquiritia,' and somewhere along the way folk ears heard 'liquor' in that first syllable, nudging the spelling toward the drink. By the time it reached Old French and then English, the sweet Greek root had been thoroughly disguised — but it's still there, growing underground in the word as in the soil.