Sweet

How to spell sweet

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sweet

What does sweet mean?

1. adjectiveHaving a sugary, pleasant taste, or more generally agreeable and kind.
2. nounA small piece of confectionery, or a dessert course, in British usage.

Sweet in a sentence

• adjective

  The ripe peaches were unusually sweet this summer.

• noun

  The children each chose a sweet from the jar on the counter.

• adjective

  He wrote a sweet note thanking the nurses for their care.

• noun

  After the main course she ordered a chocolate sweet to share.

Where does sweet come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends directly from the Old English swēte, meaning 'pleasing to the taste, fragrant, or agreeable', and it is one of the deep native words of English rather than a borrowing. It traces back to a Proto-Germanic form that also gave German süß and Dutch zoet, and even further back to an ancient root that linguists reconstruct as something like 'swād', meaning 'pleasant' or 'sweet to taste'. That same distant root surfaces in the Latin suavis, meaning 'agreeable', which English later borrowed in the word 'suave', and in the Greek hedys, the source of 'hedonist'. From its earliest sense of a pleasant taste, the word broadened to describe pleasant sounds, smells, temperaments, and people. The simple spelling hides one practical trap: it sounds exactly like 'suite', the set of rooms or furniture, so the everyday word with the double e is the one to reach for when you mean pleasant or sugary.

How the word is built

• sweet (from Old English swēte: pleasing to the senses, especially to taste)

Words that sound like sweet

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• suite: A set of connected rooms used together, especially in a hotel.