How to style the parent element when hovering a child element?

Question

I know that there does not exist a CSS parent selector, but is it possible to style a parenting element when hovering a child element without such a selector?

To giv

Answer 1

This solution depends fully on the design, but if you have a parent div that you want to change the background on when hovering a child you can try to mimic the parent with a ::after / ::before.

<div class="item">
    design <span class="icon-cross">x</span>
</div>

CSS:

.item {
    background: blue;
    border-radius: 10px;
    position: relative;
    z-index: 1;
}
.item span.icon-cross:hover::after {
    background: DodgerBlue;
    border-radius: 10px;
    display: block;
    position: absolute;
    z-index: -1;
    top: 0;
    left: 0;
    right: 0;
    bottom: 0;
    content: "";
}

See a full fiddle example here

Answer 2

A simple jquery solution for those who don't need a pure css solution:

    $(".letter").hover(function() {
      $(this).closest("#word").toggleClass("hovered")
    });

.hovered {
  background-color: lightblue;
}

.letter {
  margin: 20px;
  background: lightgray;
}

.letter:hover {
  background: grey;
}

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<div id="word">
  <div class="letter">T</div>
  <div class="letter">E</div>
  <div class="letter">S</div>
  <div class="letter">T</div>
</div>