a. [f. SWEET a. + -ISH1.] Somewhat or slightly sweet.
1580. Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong, Douceastre, sweetish.
1601. Holland, Pliny, XIV. vi. I. 414. Sweetish they be, and yet otherwhiles they have an unripe and harsh rellish of the wood.
1681. Grew, Musæum, IV. I. 354. It becomes sweetish, and makes no Effervescence upon the injection of the Chalk.
1778. Pryce, Min. Cornub., 56. If the acid becomes a little sweetish, Lead is certainly mixed with the Mercury.
1803. Southey, in Ann. Rev., I. 69. A lake of sweetish water, much frequented by water fowl.
1871. Napheys, Prev. & Cure Dis., III. ii. 626. When the odor [of the breath] is sickly sweetish, we may conclude the lungs are out of order.
1880. ‘Vernon Lee,’ Italy, iii. 151. A grandiloquent poem, stately and sweetish, full of gods, goddesses, and little chubby Cupids.
advb. 1864. Garrod, Mat. Med. (ed. 2), 256. Of a sweetish-bitter taste.
1895. Kipling, 2nd Jungle Bk., 186. A sweetish-sourish smell.
Hence Sweetishness.
1752. Berkeley, Th. Tar-water, Wks. 1784, II. 645. A fade sweetishness, offensive to the palate.
1831. J. Wilson, in Blackw. Mag., XXIX. 8. A peculiar sort o’ wersh fuzionless nonsense that’s gotten a sweaty sweetishness aboot it.
