dulcis

Dulcis, dulce is a third-declension adjective of two terminations: masculine and feminine share dulcis, the neuter is dulce, and the ablative singular ends in -i. Comparative dulcior, superlative dulcissimus. Of water it means fresh rather than salt, aqua dulcis against the sea, so a translation as "sweet water" can mislead.

Of people it simply means dear, and Roman letters and tombstones are full of it: dulcissime frater, dulcissima coniunx, with no sugar intended. That is the sense doing most of the work in this corpus. Italian dolce, Spanish dulce and French doux all descend from it, and English took dulcet and, through the musical Italian, the whole vocabulary of dolce.