sour

CEFRB1

/ˈsaʊ.ə/

adjective

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    adjective

    Having a sharp acid taste like lemon.

  2. 02

    adjective

    Extra detail

    Made rancid by fermentation, etc.

Examples

  • If you add lemon, it will become sour.

  • Don't drink that milk; it's turned sour.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5
Synonyms
5

Also pronounced

  • [ˈsɑːə]

Deep Dive

adjective

Extra meanings

  1. Tasting or smelling rancid.

  2. Tasting of acidity.

  3. Hostile or unfriendly.

More examples

In context

  • His sour breath makes it unpleasing to talk to him.

  • Milk easily turns sour.

  • The milk turned sour.

Synonyms

Antonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The homemade lemonade tasted extremely blank due to the extra lemon juice added.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

adjective

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, bitter”), Polish ser (“cheese”), Czech sýr (“cheese”), Slovak syr (“cheese”), Russian сырой (syroj, “raw”), Ukrainian сири́й (syrýj, “raw”), Old Church Slavonic сꙑръ (syrŭ, “moist, cheese”).