a. and sb.
A. adj. Sweet with an admixture or aftertaste of bitterness. fig. agreeable or pleasant with an alloy of pain or unpleasantness.
1611. Cotgr., Amer-doux, a bitter-sweet apple.
1633. Rowley, Match Midn., in O. Pl., VIII. 373 (N.). Till then adieu, you bitter-sweet one.
1641. Maisterton, Serm., 18. Bitter-sweet delights, or pleasures mixt with pain.
1749. Fielding, Tom Jones, V. iii. To compose a draught that might be termed bitter-sweet.
1855. Brimley, Ess., 92. It awakes all the fountains of bitter-sweet memory.
B. sb.
1. A thing that is bitter-sweet; sweetness or pleasure alloyed with bitterness.
c. 1386. Chaucer, Chan. Yeom. Prol. & T., 325. Vn-to hem it is a bitter-swete.
1627. Feltham, Resolves, 295. ’Tis something like Love, a kinde of bitter-sweet.
1878. Symonds, Sonn. M. Angelo, xl. A bitter-sweet sways here and there my mind.
2. A kind of apple.
1393. Gower, Conf., III. 281. Lich unto the bitter swete, For though it thenke a man first swete, He shall well felen ate laste, That it is soure.
1483. Cath. Angl., 33. A Bittyrswete, amarimellum, musceum.
1552. Huloet, Apple called a bytter swete, amarimellum.
1727. Bradley, Fam. Dict., s.v. Cyder, The best sort of Cyder … made of … the Bitter-sweet.
3. Herb. The Woody Nightshade, Solanum Dulcamara, a common shrubling plant in Britain. (A translation by Turner of the med.Latin name.)
1568. Turner, Herbal, III. 2.
1597. Gerard, Herbal, lviii. 278. Bitter sweete bringeth foorth wooddie stalks as doth the Vine.
1671. Salmon, Syn. Med., III. xxii. 390. Bittersweet helps the Jaundies.
1821. Clare, Vill. Minstr., II. 198. Ramping woodbines and blue bitter-sweet.
1882. Times, 6 July, 10/4. The bitter-sweet is a twining shrub with scarlet berries.
