sweet

   Used vocatively as an endearment in its own right, as the head word in a longer vocative expression such as ‘old sweet’ (used by a man to his mistress in The Philanderer, by Stanley Kauffman) or ‘dear sweet’ (used in An American Dream, by Norman Mailer), or as an element in expressions like ‘my sweet baby’, ‘my sweet darling girl’. Absolute Beginners, by Colin MacInnes, has an example of ‘sweet’ used in a friendly rather than intimate way to a girl.

   The more usual ‘my sweet’ is found in Henry’s War, by Jeremy Brooks; Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis; The Limits of Love, by Frederick Raphael; The Pumpkin Eater, by Penelope Mortimer; Room at the Top, by John Braine. A Travelling Woman, by John Wain and Within and Without, by John Harvey, both have examples of ‘my poor sweet’. The latter novel also has ‘my sweet girl’, ‘my sweet darling girl’ used as intimacies.

   Shakespeare often uses ‘sweet’ + first name vocatively, as well as: sweet lord, sweet lady, sweet youth, sweet love, sweet coz, good sweet husband, sweet sister, sweet one, sweet prince, sweet playfellow, sweet friend, and many more. ‘Sweet’, for Shakespeare, was clearly one of those conventional vocative elements, along with ‘good’, ‘noble’, ‘gentle’, and the like.