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sour

Pronunciation: /ˈsaʊ.ə/

The English word “sour” has 20 meanings listed here.

adjective

  1. Tasting of acidity.
  2. Made rancid by fermentation, etc.
  3. Tasting or smelling rancid.
  4. Hostile or unfriendly.
  5. Excessively acidic and thus infertile. (of soil)
  6. Containing excess sulfur. (of petroleum)
  7. Unfortunate or unfavorable.
  8. Off-pitch, out of tune.

noun

  1. The sensation of a sour taste.
  2. A drink made with whiskey, lemon or lime juice and sugar.
  3. Any cocktail containing lemon or lime juice.
  4. A sweet/candy having a sharply sour taste.
  5. A sour or acid substance; whatever produces a painful effect.
  6. The acidic solution used in souring fabric.

verb

  1. To make sour.
  2. To become sour.
  3. To spoil or mar; to make disenchanted.
  4. To become disenchanted.
  5. To make (soil) cold and unproductive.
  6. To macerate (lime) and render it fit for plaster or mortar.

Etymology

From Middle English sour, from Old English sūr (“sour”), from Proto-West Germanic *sūr, from Proto-Germanic *sūraz (“sour”), from Proto-Indo-European *súHros (“sour”). Cognate with West Frisian soer, Dutch zuur (“sour”), Low German suur, German sauer (“sour”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish sur (“sour”), French sur (“sour”), Faroese súrur (“sour”), Icelandic súr (“sour,…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.