Bittersweet means happy and sad at the same time. A bittersweet ending, a bittersweet memory, bittersweet chocolate.
It is the word for the feeling nothing else names: pleasure with loss inside it, as at a last day somewhere good. In American chocolate it is a real category with a defined minimum of cocoa, which Britain calls dark or plain.
1adjectivebittersweetHappy and sad at the same time.
“Leaving school was bittersweet: I was excited about the future but sad to say goodbye.”
bittersweet is a quality.
Bitter plus sweet, in Middle English, with the same compound in several Germanic languages.
Middle English
bitterswete
English, today
bittersweet
From Middle English bitterswete, biterswete, equivalent to bitter + sweet. Cognate with stq bitterswäit (“bittersweet”), West Frisian bittersoet (“bittersweet”), Dutch bitterzoet (“bittersweet”), German bittersüß (“bittersweet”), Danish bittersød (“bittersweet”), Swedish bittersöt (“bittersweet”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA