Word.ws English Dictionary

sweet sixteen

sweet sixteen noun: a girl's sixteenth birthday, or sixteenth-birthday party and a related coming of age party.

Noun

sweet sixteen (plural sweet sixteens)

  1. (US, informal) A girl's sixteenth birthday, or sixteenth-birthday party and a related coming of age party.
    • But one tradition associated with the age hangs on: the Sweet Sixteen celebration. Symptomatic of at least a partial swing away from counterculture sentiments, the Sweet Sixteen party—relatively dormant during the anti‐Establishment turmoil of the late 60's and early 70's—is becoming popular again...1978 January 4, Lynn Ames, “Sweet Sixteen: A Rite That Persists”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 19 Oct 2021
  2. Sixteen.

Proper noun capitalized: Sweet Sixteen

Sweet Sixteen

  1. (US, informal) The sixteen teams participating in the regional semifinals of the NCAA Division I tournament, one of whom will become the national champion.
  2. (US, informal) The round of the NCAA Division I basketball tournament where all but 16 teams have been eliminated.
  3. (US, informal) An appearance in the Sweet Sixteen.
    • The new coach has just led the Nimrods to their first Sweet Sixteen.

Forms of sweet sixteen

pluralsweet sixteens
alternative formsweet 16

Questions about sweet sixteen

What does sweet sixteen mean?
Sweet sixteen means a girl's sixteenth birthday, or sixteenth-birthday party and a related coming of age party.
What part of speech is sweet sixteen?
Sweet sixteen can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of sweet sixteen?
The plural of sweet sixteen is sweet sixteens.

Words near sweet sixteen in the dictionary

  1. sweet seventeens
  2. sweet shaggytuft
  3. sweet shop
  4. sweet shops
  5. sweet shrimp
  6. sweet sixteen
  7. sweet sixteens
  8. sweet smell of success
  9. sweet smelling
  10. sweet sorghum
  11. sweet sorghums

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sweet sixteen (page history and authors); Sweet Sixteen (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 sixteen.wav.

Cite this entry: “sweet sixteen.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sweet_sixteen. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.