- sweetness and light
-
1. extreme or excessive pleasantness or amiability.2. decorous charm combined with intelligence.[1695-1705]
* * *
Universalium. 2010.
sweetness and light
Look at other dictionaries:
Sweetness and light — is an English idiom that indicates a person’s friendliness and ease. Today, it is generally used ironically to describe insincere courtesy. For example: The two had been fighting for a month, but around others it was all sweetness and light.… … Wikipedia
sweetness and light — ► sweetness and light good natured benevolence or harmony. Main Entry: ↑sweetness … English terms dictionary
sweetness and light — noun a mild reasonableness when he learned who I was he became all sweetness and light • Hypernyms: ↑affability, ↑affableness, ↑amiability, ↑amiableness, ↑bonhomie, ↑geniality * * * noun … Useful english dictionary
sweetness and light — noun Date: 1869 1. a harmonious combination of beauty and enlightenment viewed as a hallmark of culture 2. a. amiable reasonableness of disposition < they were all sweetness and light > b. an untroubled or harmonious state or condition < but all… … New Collegiate Dictionary
sweetness and light — noun That which is good, pure, pleasant, etc. So it transpired, though not everything at Garmisch was sweetness and light. The leader of the British team, Arnold Lunn, the father of alpine ski racing and a British public school amateur to the… … Wiktionary
sweetness and light — good natured benevolence or harmony. [taken from Jonathan Swift and used by Matthew Arnold in Culture and Anarchy (1869).] → sweetness … English new terms dictionary
sweetness and light — Synonyms and related words: bathos, bleeding heart, cloyingness, goo, hearts and flowers, maudlinness, mawkishness, mush, mushiness, namby pamby, namby pambyism, namby pambyness, nostalgia, nostomania, oversentimentalism, oversentimentality,… … Moby Thesaurus
all sweetness and light — phrase if a person or situation is all sweetness and light, they are very pleasant, often in a way that seems false One minute she’s incredibly rude to me and the next she’s all sweetness and light. Thesaurus: polite in an unpleasant or insincere … Useful english dictionary
all is sweetness and light — if all is sweetness and light, everyone is being friendly and pleasant with each other, especially when this was not expected. They had a furious argument last night but this morning all was sweetness and light … New idioms dictionary
all sweetness and light — if a person or situation is all sweetness and light, they are very pleasant, often in a way that seems false One minute she s incredibly rude to me and the next she s all sweetness and light … English dictionary
be all sweetness and light — to be very pleasant and friendly, especially when other people are not expecting you to be. I was expecting her to be in a foul mood but she was all sweetness and light … New idioms dictionary
