sweetness and light

Syllables: sweet·ness and lightUK/ˌswiːtnəs n̩ ˈlaɪt/

sweetness and light noun: that which is good, pleasant, pure, etc.

Noun

sweetness and light (uncountable)

(idiomatic, often in the negative or ironic) That which is good, pleasant, pure, etc.
- The Difference is, that inſtead of Dirt and Poiſon, we have rather choſe to fill our Hives with Honey and Wax, thus furniſhing Mankind with the two Nobleſt of Things, which are Sweetneſs and Light.1704, [Jonathan Swift], “A Full and True Account of the Battel Fought Last Friday, between the Antient and the Modern Books in St. James’s Library”, in A Tale of a Tub. […], London: […] John Nutt...
- Sorrow and disillusionment racked William Mulliner like a physical pain. That his friends inside there, in spite of the fact that he had been all sweetness and light and had not done a thing to them, should have thrown him out into the hard street was the saddest thing he had ever heard of; and for...1927 April 9, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, “The Story of William”, in Meet Mr. Mulliner, London: Herbert Jenkins […], published 27 September 1927, →OCLC, page 186

Examples of sweetness and light in a sentence

So it transpired, though not everything at Garmisch was sweetness and light.2003, Richard Holt, “Great Britain: The Amateur Tradition”, in Arnd Krüger, William [J.] Murray, editors, The Nazi Olympics: Sport...
Mailing lists are not all sweetness and light, though.2009 August, Jono Bacon, “Communicating Clearly”, in Andy Oram, Simon St. Laurent, editors, The Art of Community: Building the New Age of...

Origin of sweetness and light

First used by the Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) in A Full and True Account of the Battel Fought Last Friday, between the Antient and the Modern Books in St. James’s Library, known as “The Battle of the Books”, which was originally published in A Tale of a Tub (1704): see the quotation.

Words that rhyme with sweetness and light

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sweetness and light

What does sweetness and light mean?: Sweetness and light means that which is good, pleasant, pure, etc.
How do you use sweetness and light in a sentence?: So it transpired, though not everything at Garmisch was sweetness and light.
What part of speech is sweetness and light?: Sweetness and light is a noun.
How do you pronounce sweetness and light?: Sweetness and light is pronounced /ˌswiːtnəs n̩ ˈlaɪt/ (UK).

Words near sweetness and light in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: sweetness and light (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-sweetness and light.ogg.

Cite this entry: “sweetness and light.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sweetness_and_light. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.