Acid Meaning
/ˈæsɪd/Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
adjSour, sharp, or biting to the taste; tart; having the taste of vinegar.
adjSour-tempered.
Sentence Examples
The acid burned the metal.
Acid rain in drinking water affects human health.
The acid burned a hole in her coat.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The chemist carefully poured the strong ____ into the glass beaker using protective gloves.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Lemons and oranges contain citric ____, which gives them a sour taste.
Word Origin & History
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂eḱ- Proto-Indo-European *-éh₁ti Proto-Indo-European *-yeti Proto-Indo-European *-éh₁yeti Proto-Indo-European *h₂eḱéh₁yeti Proto-Italic *akēō Latin aceō Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁-der. Proto-Italic *-iðos Latin -idus Latin acidusbor. French acidebor. English acid From French acide, from Latin acidus (“sour, acid”), from aceō (“to be sour”). Doublet of agita.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"His voice was as stern and his face as acid as ever."
— 1864, Anthony Trollope, The Small House at Allington, 2nd edition, volume 2, Smith, Elder & Co., page 235:
"It must be admitted that Challenger is provocative in the last degree, but Summerlee has an acid tongue, which makes matters worse."
— 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
"Little disappointed, then, she turned attention to "Chat of the Social World," gossip which exercised potent fascination upon the girl's intelligence. She devoured with more avidity than she had her food those pretentiously phrased chronicles of the snobocracy—[…]—distilling therefrom an acid envy that robbed her napoleon of all its flavor."
— 1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter I (Anarchy), page 373, column 2:
"Like other nyssas, it is in nature a creature of swampy places and looks loveliest where massed close to water and reflected in it, but justifies itself elsewhere if the soil is moist and acid, succeeding in wet clay."
— 1975, Peter N. Barber, Cecil Ernest Lucas Phillips, The Trees Around Us, page 101:
"SE onset depends on a complex network of interactions among plant growth regulators, mainly auxins and cytokinins, during the proembryogenic early stages, and ethylene and gibberellic and abscisic acids later in the development of somatic embryos."
— 2015 August 18, Clelia De-la-Peña et al., “The role of chromatin modifications in somatic embryogenesis in plants”, in Frontiers in Plant Science, volume 6, →DOI:
Explore More B2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The chemist carefully poured the strong ____ into the glass beaker using protective gloves.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Lemons and oranges contain citric ____, which gives them a sour taste.