bittersweets

Noun

bittersweet (countable and uncountable, plural bittersweets)

1. Bittersweet nightshade (Solanum dulcamara).
   • Bitter ſweete bringeth foorth wooddie ſtalks as doth the Vine, parted into many ſlender creeping braunches, by which it climeth and taketh holde of hedges and ſhrubbes next vnto it. […] Bitter ſweet doth grow in moiſt places about ditches, riuers, and hedges, almoſt euery where.1597, John Gerarde [i.e., John Gerard], “Of Bitter Sweete, or Woode Nightshade”, in The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes. […], London: […] Edm[und] Bollifant, for Bonham and Iohn Norton...
2. Bittersweetness.
   • I had once before visited these three villages, Skedans, Tanoo and Cumshewa. The bitter-sweet of their overwhelming loneliness created a longing to return to them.1941, Emily Carr, chapter 18, in Klee Wyck
3. (US) A vine, of the genus Celastrus, having small orange fruit that open to reveal red seeds.
   • Over by the creek-bed scarlet-flamed sumac shouldered the silver-green of the willows, and orange-colored bittersweet crept through the tangle of wild plums.1935, Bess Streeter Aldrich, chapter 43, in Spring Came on Forever
4. A variety of apple with a bittersweet taste.
   • "They had a good crop of bitter-sweets, they couldn’t grind them all"—nodding towards an orchard where some heaps of apples had been left lying ever since the ingathering.1886 May – 1887 April, Thomas Hardy, chapter VI, in The Woodlanders […], volume I, London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published 1887, →OCLC, page 99
5. Any variety of clam in the family Glycymerididae
6. A pinkish-orange color. Any color in between scarlet and orange.

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