having a moderate but not large degree of sweetness; between sweet and bitter, savoury, dry, or sour
semisweet chocolate/wine
semisweet in American English
(ˌsɛmɪˈswit)
adjective
only slightly sweetened
semisweet in American English
(ˌsemiˈswit, ˌsemai-)
adjective
somewhat sweet; containing a small amount of sweetening
a semisweet cookie
semisweet chocolate
Word origin
[1950–55; semi- + sweet]This word is first recorded in the period 1950–55. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: Common Market, bleep, point spread, speech recognition, wiretapsemi- is a combining form borrowed from Latin, meaning “half,” freely prefixed to Englishwords of any origin, now sometimes with the senses “partially,” “incompletely,” “somewhat”.Other words that use the affix semi- include: semiautomatic, semidetached, semimonthly, semisophisticated
Examples of 'semisweet' in a sentence
semisweet
The dark chocolate demonstrated higher phenolic content and antioxidant activity, followed by semisweet, soy, and milk chocolates.
Niara da Silva Medeiros, Roberta Koslowsky Marder, Mariane Farias Wohlenberg, CláudiaFunchal, Caroline Dani 2015, 'Total Phenolic Content and Antioxidant Activity of Different Types of Chocolate, Milk,Semisweet, Dark, and Soy, in Cerebral Cortex, Hippocampus, and Cerebellum of WistarRats', Biochemistry Research Internationalhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/294659. Retrieved from DOAJ CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode)