Other forms: confections
A confection is a sweet dish, or something elaborately put together. A sugary confection, a confection of lace, the whole confection.
The figurative use is faintly mocking: calling a building or an argument a confection says it is decorative and insubstantial. A confectioner makes sweets, and confectionery is the trade — the word is spelled with an e in the middle.
1nounconfectionA sweet dish, or something elaborately put together.
“The wedding cake was a towering confection of sugar flowers and cream.”
confection is a sweet, or an assembly.
The Latin parts are with and make, the same making behind a factory. A confection is a sweet thing built up piece by piece, the way anything is made in one.
hooks ontofactory
Latin confectio means a preparing, from conficere, to put together — con plus facere, to make.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰeh₁-
Latin
confectio
Old French
confeccion
Middle English
confescioun
English, today
confection
Built from
From Middle English confescioun, borrowed from Old French confeccion (French confection), borrowed from Latin confectio, from cōnfectus, past participle of cōnficiō (“prepare”), from con- (“with”) + faciō (“to make, do”). by surface analysis, confect + -ion. Originally "the making by means of ingredients"; sense of "candy or light pastry" predominant since 1500s.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA