sweet Hear it!

sweet Definition

sweet (swēt)

adjective

    1. having a taste of, or like that of, sugar
    2. containing sugar in some form sweet wines
    1. having a generally agreeable taste, smell, sound, appearance, etc.; pleasant
    2. agreeable to the mind; gratifying sweet praise
    3. having a friendly, pleasing disposition; characterized by kindliness and gentleness a sweet girl
    4. dear: formerly a polite form of address sweet sir
    5. sentimental, saccharine, or cloying
    6. Slang good, delightful, etc.: a generalized epithet of approval
    1. not rancid, spoiled, sour, or fermented sweet milk, sweet cider
    2. not salty or salted: said of water or butter
    3. free from sourness or acidity: said of soil
  1. Chem.
    1. free from unpleasant odors and gases
    2. purified and free from acid, corrosive elements, etc.
  2. Jazz designating or of music or playing characterized by more or less strict adherence to melody, sentimentality or blandness in tone and rhythm, and a moderate tempo

Etymology: ME swete < OE, akin to swot, sweetness, Ger süss, sweet < IE base *swad-, pleasing to taste > Gr hēdys, sweet, L suadere, to persuade & suavis, sweet

noun

  1. the quality of being sweet; sweetness
    1. sweet foods
    2. Chiefly Brit. a piece of candy, or a sweet dessert
    3. something, as an experience, that gives delight or satisfaction: usually used in pl. the sweets of victory
    4. sweet potato
  2. a sweet, or beloved, person; darling

adverb

in a sweet manner

sweet Related Forms
sweetly adverb sweet·ness noun
sweet Idioms

be sweet on

Informal to be in love with

Sweet Definition

Sweet (swēt)

Sweet, Henry 1845-1912; Eng. linguist

sweet Synonyms

sweet

modif.

  1. Having the taste of sugar

    toothsome, sugary, luscious, candied, sweet as honey, sweet as sugar, sugared, honeyed, syrupy, like honey, like sugar, honeyed, saccharine, cloying, like nectar, delicious; see also rich 4.

    Antonyms sour*, bitter, sharp.

  2. Pleasant in disposition

    agreeable, pleasing, engaging, winning, delightful, patient, reasonable, gentle, kind, generous, unselfish, sweet-tempered, even-tempered, good-humored, considerate, thoughtful, companionable, saccharine, mushy, gooey, soppy; see also friendly 1.

    Antonyms selfish*, repulsive, inconsiderate.

  3. Not salt

    fresh, unsalted, uncured, unseasoned, freshened.

    Antonyms salty*, pickled, briny.

  4. Dear

    sympathetic, loving, winsome; see beloved.

sweet Synonyms

sweet

n.

  1. A term of affection

    dear, sweetheart, dearest; see darling 2.

  2. A dessert; British

    the sweet course, final course, pudding (British), end of the meal, top-off*, afters* (British); see also dessert.

sweet Usage Examples

Converse of object

  • boil: This could be four to six lumps of sugar or boiled sweets or 200 ml of orange juice.
  • eat: You might unconsciously eat sweets to make up for lack of attention.
  • sell: Children begging, some of them little more than toddlers trying to sell sweets on the corner of a street.

Preposition: as

  • honey: So long as an evil deed has not ripened, the fool thinks it as sweet as honey.
  • nut: For me bluegrass and all varients in between is either deadly mechanical like a wind up clock or it as sweet as a nut.

Adjective modifier

  • homemade: Homemade sweets and cookies can make lovely presents - gift boxes and petit four cases can be found cheaply in supermarkets throughout the year.
  • home-made: A fresh selection of home-made sweets is available at the sweet counter.
  • favorite: Win £ 50 of your favorite sweets... Ask The Family Style!
  • Indian: Exciting thalis, Indian sweets and delicious, fresh samosas are just some of the cuisine on offer.

Modifies a noun

  • potato: My complex carbs come from oats or sweet potatoes.
  • pea: Sow sweet peas in a cold frame or the greenhouse for early summer blooms next year.
  • corn: They may raid new potato crops, dig up carrots and damage sweet corn.
  • chestnut: Sweet chestnut or green oak posts last in the soil for a long time without the need for wood preservatives.
  • smell: The sweet smell of leather, the sweet smell of success... Never had a company car?
  • tooth: They are all there to tempt the sweet tooth.

Used with adjective complement

  • smell: The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet, The only sweet thing that is not also fleet.
  • boil: I popped a boiled sweet - but my saliva didn't flow, and I might as well have sucked a stone.
  • taste: Sébastien Loeb commented: " Victory always tastes sweet.

Modifying Another Word

  • sickly: It's all sickly sweet R&B DJ's and Ritzy chicks round here.

Preposition: than

  • sugar: Aspartame is 180 to 200 times sweeter than table sugar, so very little is used.
sweet Quotes

Still to be neat, still to be drest, As you were going to a feast; Still to be powdered, still perfumed, Lady, it is to be presumed, Though art's hid causes are not found, All is not sweet, all is not sound. Give me a look, give me a face, That makes simplicity a grace; Robes loosely flowing, hair as free: Such sweet neglect more taketh me, Than all the adulteries of art; They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.

—Jonson, Ben

The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet, The only sweet thing that is not also fleet.

—Thomas, (Philip) Edward

La mort ne fait jamais mal. La mort est douce† Ce qui fait souffrir avec certains poisons, certaines blessures maladroites, c'est la vie. C'est le reste de vie. Il faut se confier franchement a'   la mort comme une amie. Death never hurts. Death is sweet† Life is what makes us suffer with its poisons and awkward injuries. That's what remains of life.We must confide freely in death as we would in a friend.

—Anouilh,Jean

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.

—Keats,John

We loved, siröused to meet: How sad and bad and mad it wasö But then, how it was sweet!

—Browning, Robert

Go, lovely rose, Tell her that wastes her time and me, That now she knows, When I resemble her to thee, How sweet and fair she seems to be.

—Waller, Edmund

How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

—Bible (Old Testament)

By cool Siloam's shady rill How sweet the lily grows!

—Heber, Reginald

Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; And to give thanks isgood, and to forgive.

—Swinburne, Algernon Charles

Itook thelittlebookout of theangel'shand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.

—Bible (NewTestament)

   Tout au monde est me"  le¤   d'amertume et de charmes: La guerre a ses douceurs, l'hymen a ses alarmes. Everything in the world is a mixture of the sweet and the sour: War has its own sweetness and marriage its alarms.

—La Fontaine,Jean de

There has fallen a splendid tear From the passion-flower at the gate. She is coming, my dove, my dear; She is coming, my life, my fate; The red rose cries,'She is near, she is near;' And the white rose weeps,'She is late;' The larkspur listens,'I hear, I hear;' And the lily whispers,'I wait.' She is coming, my own, my sweet; Were it ever so airya tread, My heart would hear her and beat, Were it earth in an earthy bed; My dust would hear her and beat; Had I lain for a century dead; Would start and tremble under her feet, And blossom in purple and red.

—Tennyson

All my joys to this are folly, Naught so sweet as melancholy.

—Burton, Robert pseudonym DemocritusJunior

There is continual spring, and harvest there Continual, both meeting at one time: For both the boughs do laughing blossoms bear, And with fresh colours deck the wanton prime, And eke attonce the heavy trees they climb, Which seem to labour under their fruits load: The whiles the joyous birds make their pastime Amongst the shady leaves, their sweet above, And their true loves without suspicion tell abroad.

—Spenser, Edmund

So sweet love seemed that April morn, When first we kissed beside the thorn, So strangely sweet, it was not strange We thought that love could never change. But I can tellölet truth be toldö That love will change in growing old; Though day by day is nought to see, So delicate his motions be.

—Bridges, Robert Seymour

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.

—Bible (Old Testament)

   Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon; Rest, rest, on mother's breast, Father will come to thee soon; Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the west Under the silver moon: Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.

—Tennyson

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. It is a sweet and seemly thing to die for one's country. See Owen 632:57.

—Horace full name  Quintus Horatius Flaccus   65

   Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

—Tennyson

  That sweet enemy, France.

—Shute, Nevil originally Nevil Shute Norway

   A heat full of coldness, a sweet full of bitterness, a pain full of pleasantness, which maketh thoughts have eyes and hearts ears, bred by desire, nursed by delight, weaned by jealousy, killed by dissembling, buried by ingratitude, and this is love. Fair lady, will you any?

—Lyly,John

Drinking is the soldier's pleasure; Rich the treasure; Sweet the pleasure; Sweet is pleasure after pain.

—Dryden,John

Sweet is revengeöespecially to women.

—Rochdale

The Red Cow was very respectable, shealways behaved like a perfect lady and she knew What was What. To her a thing was either black or whiteöthere was no question of it being grey or perhaps pink. People were good or they were badöthere was nothing in between. Dandelions were either sweet or souröthere were never any moderately nice ones.

—Travers, P(amela) L(yndon)

Poetry is a rich, full-blooded whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbers the leaf, the duet of two nightingales, the sweet pea, that has run wild,Creation's tears in shoulder blades.

—Stevens,Wallace

You promise heavens free from strife, Pure truth, and perfect change of will; But sweet, sweet is this human life, So sweet, I fain would breathe it still; Your chilly stars I can forgo, This warm kind world is all I know.

—Cory,William originally  WilliamJohnson

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast, and quiet mind, To war and arms I fly.

—Lovelace, Richard

That sweet bondage which is freedom's self.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

'Tis sweet to win, no matter how, one's laurels By blood or ink; 'tis sweet to put an end To strife; 'tis sometimes sweet to have our quarrels, Particularly with a tiresome friend; Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels; Dear is the helpless creature we defend Against the world; and dear the schoolboy spot We ne'er forget, though there we are forgot.

—Rochdale