syntactic sugar n.
[coined by Peter Landin] Features added to a language or other
formalism to make it `sweeter' for humans, features which do not
affect the expressiveness of the formalism (compare chrome). Used esp. when there is an obvious and
trivial translation of the `sugar' feature into other constructs
already present in the notation. C's a[i] notation
is syntactic sugar for *(a + i). "Syntactic sugar
causes cancer of the semicolon." -- Alan Perlis.
The variants `syntactic saccharin' and `syntactic syrup' are
also recorded. These denote something even more gratuitous, in
that syntactic sugar serves a purpose (making something more
acceptable to humans), but syntactic saccharin or syrup serve no
purpose at all. Compare candygrammar, syntactic salt.