candy-striper
‘young female volunteer nurse at a hospital, by 1962, so called from the pink-striped design of her uniform, similar to patterns on peppermint candy’
Lexical development traced from the Tamil root:
E. candy-striper ‘a volunteer worker in a hospital’ < candy ‘crystallized sugar’ + stripe < O.F. çucre candi ‘sugar candy’ < Arab. qandi < Pers. qand ‘cane sugar’ < perhaps Dravidian (cf.: Tam. kantu ‘candy,’ kattu ‘to harden, condense’) < kand < Tamil kaṇṭu