azúcar

Spanish

Inherited from Old Spanish açúcar, borrowed from Arabic السُّكَّر (as-sukkar, “the sugar”), via Andalusian Arabic. Cognate with English sugar.

azúcar m or f same meaning (plural azúcares)

In addition to being used as either a masculine noun or a feminine noun, azúcar may also be preceded by the article el while construed as feminine (a phenomenon otherwise reserved for feminine nouns beginning with a stressed /ˈa/ sound, such as alma). Thus, el azúcar blanco, la azúcar blanca and el azúcar blanca are all valid ways of saying "the white sugar". This latter form is considered a remnant of a grammatical rule that existed in older variants of Spanish, according to which the article el preceded feminine words that began with any (stressed or unstressed) vowel sound, not just /ˈa/.
According to the Royal Spanish Academy, azúcar is normally masculine when used in its scientific sense (i.e., referring to the chemical compound).