Word.ws English Dictionary

sweet-and-sour

sweet-and-sour adjective: having both sweet and sour or tart taste.

Adjective

sweet-and-sour (comparative more sweet-and-sour, superlative most sweet-and-sour)

  1. Having both sweet and sour or tart taste.
  2. Having both positive and negative traits, or inspiring conflicting good and bad feelings.
    • Like an accordion at a country wedding producing sweet-and-sour notes, some importers are expanding their U.S. retail automotive operations while others are skinnying down.1982, Ward's Auto World, volume 18, numbers 1-6, page 65
    • Humans utilize a kind of sweet and sour blend of love potion called charm.2014, Lloyd E. McIlveen, Improving on Love and Relationships
    Synonyms:
    bittersweet

Noun

sweet-and-sour (countable and uncountable, plural sweet-and-sours)

  1. Any dish that combines sweet and sour flavours, especially
    • There is a strong German ethnic streak in rural western Maryland and it shows in the cooking with its sweet-and-sours.1986, Fortitudine, page 3
  2. A Chinese-style dish with sweet-and-sour sauce.
    • First we had tossed green salad, prepared by Sister McDonald and our two new members, and then our Chinese food - chow mein, rice, egg foo young, sweet and sours, bread sticks, chinese tea with fortune cakes, prepared and served by our Brother Yardmasters for a "Chinese Food" dinner.1949, The Railroad Yardmaster
    • Breakfast is served until 11am, after which delicious chilled beans, sweet and sours, and stir fries appear for around RM3 a portion.2003, Charles de Ledesma, Mark Lewis, Pauline Savage, Rough Guides (Firm), Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, Rough Guides, →ISBN, page 417
  3. Candy with a sour taste, often dusted with fizzy sherbet.
    • No overwhelming sweetness, but a cool, refreshing after taste in your mints that lets delicate natural flavors come through. Same for tabletted sweet and sours, or gums1970, Candy and Baked Snack Industry
    • There are elderberry balls, boiled sweets with paper mottos, Katrien's caramels, candied anise, liquorice chew sticks and black liquorice laces, sweet-and-sours, and tart strawberry drops, all lined up in large glass jars.2016 June 30, Stefan Hertmans, War and Turpentine, Random House, →ISBN
  4. A sweetened sour pickle, or a combination of sweet and sour pickles.
    • Sweet and sours are in sellers' favor as spot stocks are light and the market in the country is rather bullish and advancing.1923, Western Canner and Packer
    • Try the Pennsylvania Dutch idea of "sweet and sours" and put both a sweet conserve or chutney and a dish of pickles on the table.)1962 07, House & Garden

sweet-and-sour meaning in Hindi, Tagalog, Indonesian and Persian

sweet-and-sour in Hindi

combined sweet and sour taste
खटमिट्ठा khaṭmiṭṭhā

sweet-and-sour in Tagalog

combined sweet and sour taste
agridulse

sweet-and-sour in Indonesian

combined sweet and sour taste
asam manis, koloke, keluyuk

sweet-and-sour in Persian

combined sweet and sour taste
ملس malas
More languagesFewer languages
sweet-and-sour in Myanmar
ချိုချဉ် hkyuihkyany

Synonyms of sweet-and-sour

Forms of sweet-and-sour

Adjective
comparativemore sweet-and-sour
superlativemost sweet-and-sour
alternative formsweet and sour
Noun
pluralsweet-and-sours

Words formed from sweet-and-sour

Phrases with sweet-and-sour

Questions about sweet-and-sour

What does sweet-and-sour mean?
Sweet-and-sour means having both sweet and sour or tart taste.
What is sweet-and-sour in Hindi?
Sweet-and-sour in Hindi is खटमिट्ठा (khaṭmiṭṭhā). See Sweet-and-sour meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is sweet-and-sour?
Sweet-and-sour can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near sweet-and-sour in the dictionary

  1. sweet young thing
  2. sweet young things
  3. Sweet's syndrome
  4. sweet-after-death
  5. sweet-amber
  6. sweet-and-sour
  7. sweet-and-sour sauce
  8. sweet-and-sour sauces
  9. sweet-and-sours
  10. sweet-breare
  11. sweet-briar

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sweet-and-sour (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-sweet-and-sour.wav.

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