sweet lime

1 3.4

A fruit like a lemon but sweeter and less sour

noun
/swit laɪm/

: limón dulce

In India, sweet lime is often eaten plain or used to make fresh juice.

It smells like sweet lime and it's just gorgeous.

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Examples

It's the freshly squeezed sweet lime fragrance.

Zoella
It smells like sweet lime and it's just gorgeous.

Zoella
They arrived to find "a beautiful little agricultural settlement over a mile high but warm enough to grow coffee, sugar cane, bananas, oranges, sweet limes, etc." (Parsons 1941b).

Academic text (2002)
The sweet lime has a refreshing taste that makes it perfect for summer drinks.
I made a delicious salad with chopped sweet lime, avocados, and tomatoes.

Synonyms

sweet lemon

vssweet lime

1 3.4

A lemon tree and its fruit that have a mild, sweet taste and can be eaten fresh

is a similar fruit that looks like sour types but lacks their sharp acidity

Citrus limetta

vssweet lime

Specialized

6.5

A small tree that makes sweet lime fruit often used for juice

is the common name used for the edible fruit rather than the scientific species label

How Sweet

honeydew

1 2.0

sweet orange

1 1.0

sweet lime

1 3.4

lemon

308 1.0

Surface Forms

sweet lime singular

sweet limes plural

Morphology

sweet + lime

The meaning 'a lime that is sweet' is directly and transparently derived from combining the adjective 'sweet' with the noun 'lime' (an adjective + noun composition). This is a straightforward descriptive compound found cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would be able to infer the MWE's meaning.

Etymology

Sweet lime is a simple descriptive name: people put sweet before lime to show this citrus is mild and tastes a little sweet instead of sharp and sour. That's why the name means 'a citrus fruit with a mild, sweet flavor'.