Carmel vs. Caramel: Which is Correct?

On its own, popcorn is pretty good for you. If you air-pop your own popcorn and eat it plain, you’ll take in around 30 calories per cup, and that’s not a lot. Popcorn also contains plenty of fiber and antioxidants, so it can be a healthy snack. However, if you don’t like plain popcorn and prefer, let’s say, carmel corn, make no mistake—it’s not as healthy as plain air-popped popcorn, even though it contains popcorn.
And speaking of things that can be found in carmel corn, we should probably mention that there’s a spelling mistake in there as well—it should be caramel, not carmel. Caramel is the word you’re looking for if you want to talk about food or colors, carmel is a misspelling when used in that context, but is a word that can be used as name for people or places.

Caramel and How to Use It

Caramel is a noun, and it can have one of the several meanings:
1 The sweet substance made by heating sugar or syrup until it turns brown, usually used as flavoring or coloring for food:
“They are not the first bakers to note the affinity of caramel and chocolate, but by emphasizing the bitter, sweet and salty notes in both, they’ve made that rare thing: a perfectly balanced bite.”
—National Post
2 A soft toffee made by melting butter and sugar:
“Mr Willy Wonka can make marshmallows that taste of violets, and rich caramels that change colour every ten seconds as you suck them, and little feathery sweets that melt away deliciously the moment you put them between your lips.”
—Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
3 The color of caramel, light brown:
“The color brown was the theme of her outfit as she donned a caramel-colored leather purse and a brown scarf that she wrapped around her neck twice.”
—The Daily Mail
If you want to say that you’re cooking sugar until it melts and turns into caramel, the verb you could use for the process is caramelize:
“But roasting not only helps maintain at least a bit of their texture; it also allows the juices to caramelize and condense.”
—The Seattle Times
You can also find caramelize spelled with an s and not a z, and that’s also correct—it’s just one of the ways British and American English are different:
“Cooking the fish under the grill allows the miso paste to bubble and slightly caramelise, while the fish cooks evenly underneath.”
—Irish Independent
Caramel has been in use in the English language for a while, but it’s not one of the words you could trace back to Old English. It entered the language during the eighteenth century from Spanish, via French. Today, it’s occasionally misspelled as carmel, likely because of the way it’s commonly pronounced.

Carmel and How to Use It

But even if carmel is a misspelling for the sweet stuff, it doesn’t mean it should never be used. On the contrary—Carmel is a popular name for cities and geographic formations:
“Part of a proposed zoning ordinance in Carmel would require new buildings larger than 12,500 square feet to have at least two covered spots for bike parking and a shower for people who bike to work.”
—IndyStar
“The Carmel is a lovely little river. It isn’t very long but in its course it has everything a river should have.”
—John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
Carmel can also be a person’s name:
“With a passion for English, Carmel Bavington’s retirement did not last long at all.”
—Suffolk Free Press

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