Meaning
Excellent, acceptable, agreed or all right. Informal. Sweet-as with a hyphen may be used before a noun, while the unhyphenated phrase commonly stands alone. Regional use: New Zealand; also common in Australia and spreading more widely.
Origin
New Zealand English productively uses adjective plus as as an emphatic construction with no comparison stated: good as, cold as and sweet as can all be complete. Sweet as became a particularly recognisable late-20th-century formula. It is not necessary to supply an imagined missing object after as, and an exact individual coinage is not known.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- All sweet as
- Choice as
- Sweet as, bro
- Sweet-as
Usage Examples
- I can return the keys on Monday. Sweet as, no worries.
- The replacement part fits perfectly, so the repair is sweet as.