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Glite Dictionary
sweet lime

sweet lime

3.4
A fruit like a lemon but sweeter and less sour
  • noun
  • /swit laɪm/
translation icon : 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

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
sweet lemon
vssweet lime
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

How Sweet

honeydew
4 2.0
sweet lime
3.4
lemon
318 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'.