sherbet

American  

[shur-bit] / ˈʃɜr bɪt /

noun

sherbets plural

1. Sometimes sherbert a frozen dessert made with sweetened fruit juice or purée, typically containing milk or cream, with egg white or gelatin often added.

2. a traditional Middle Eastern drink made of sweetened fruit juice diluted with water and ice.

3. Chiefly British. a sweetened powder moistened in the mouth and eaten as a fizzy confection or mixed with water to make a fizzy drink.

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sherbet British  

/ ˈʃɜːbət /

noun

1. a fruit-flavoured slightly effervescent powder, eaten as a sweet or used to make a drink

   lemon sherbet

2. Also called (in Britain and certain other countries): sorbet.  a water ice made from fruit juice, egg whites, milk, etc

3. slang beer

4. a cooling Oriental drink of sweetened fruit juice

5. informal a euphemistic word for shit

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• sherbets
  plural

Etymology

Origin of sherbet

First recorded in 1595–1605; from Turkish şerbet, from Persian sharbat, from Arabic sharbah “a drink,” from shariba “to drink”

Explanation

Sherbet is a frozen dessert made of fruit juice and sugar. Though it looks like ice cream, sherbet is a little different since it's made with little or no milk or cream. Since sherbet is typically made with fruit, it often comes in shockingly bright colors like pink, orange, or green and has a refreshing taste. This delicious summer treat has been around a long time, in some form at least — the word sherbet came into English in the 17th century from the Turkish word zerbet, meaning "drink made from diluted fruit juice and sugar." Make sure you don't add an extra "r" in sherbet: the ending is spelled "bet."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

sherbet sherbets

He illuminated the auditorium with candles and converted the private boxes into buffets stocked with alcohol, coffee, hot chocolate, sherbet and carved meats.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026

It was incredibly sweet and slightly sour and fruity, reminding me of lemon sherbet.

From BBC ● Mar. 9, 2025

Mandalay Beach, also known as Oxnard State Beach, has sherbet sunsets over its dunes.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 1, 2024

Armed with a three-and-a-half-octave range, her voice was “as cool as sherbet, creamy, delicately colored, mildly flavored,” as Ariel Swartley wrote in Rolling Stone magazine in 1979.

From New York Times ● Jun. 17, 2024

The sherbet fizzed in your mouth, and if you knew how to do it, you could make white froth come out of your nostrils and pretend you were throwing a fit.

From "Boy: Tales of a Childhood" by Roald Dahl

The 800-square-foot shop serves 40 flavors of ice cream alongside sherbets, sorbets and fresh-fruit freezes; I opted for two scoops of strawberry cheesecake.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 14, 2018

Sweetshops peppered his boyhood and boyhood writing: lemon sherbets, bootlaces, gobstoppers and toffees; hard-boiled sweets served by boot-faced proprietors.

From The Guardian ● Sep. 13, 2016

There were savoury sausages, and sweet sherbets of every flavour, with coinciding lollipops to dip in them.

From The Guardian ● Jan. 11, 2013

The provocatively named passion fruit, though adding a bright sophisticated flavor to sherbets and creamy desserts, is unpleasantly cloying when eaten plain.

From Time Magazine Archive

There, with his sherbets and water pipe he resumed his old habit of inditing verse in pure Persian, for he was a scholar.

From The Adventures of Kathlyn by MacGrath, Harold

Related Words

• frozen yogurt
• sorbet