Meaning
A ripe plantain — its skin yellow and blackening, its flesh turned soft and sweet — as against the firm, starchy green plantain that is boiled or fried hard as a savoury 'food'. Sweet plantain is the one you fry golden and sweet for a side, and 'let the plantain ripe' is to wait for it to reach that sweet stage. The two states of the plantain, green and sweet, do quite different jobs on the Jamaican plate.
Examples
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Wait till di plantain sweet before yuh fry it.
Wait until the plantain is ripe before you fry it.
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Sweet plantain soft an yellow inside.
Ripe plantain is soft and yellow inside.
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Green plantain fi boil, sweet plantain fi fry.
Green plantain to boil, ripe plantain to fry.
Origin
From 'sweet' (ripe) + 'plantain'; the ripe, sweet plantain, opposite of green. See [[fry-plantain]], [[green-banana]].
How it’s used
A ripe, sweet plantain (vs. the starchy green plantain). See [[fry-plantain]], [[green-banana]].