Acidity

How to spell acidity

7 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce acidity

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does acidity mean?

1. nounThe quality or degree of being acid, sour, or sharp in taste or chemical reaction.

Acidity in a sentence

• The lab measured the acidity of the soil before planting the vines.

• A splash of cream softens the acidity of the tomato sauce.

Where does acidity come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin acidus, meaning 'sour' or 'sharp to the taste', which itself grew from the verb acere, 'to be sour'. That same Latin family gave English a whole cluster of tart relatives, including 'acid', 'acerbic', and even 'vinegar' by way of words for sour wine. The abstract noun was formed by adding the suffix -ity, which Latin and later French used to turn an adjective into the name of a quality, much as it does in 'purity' or 'clarity'. English took the word up in the early 1600s, at first for the simple sense of sourness and soon afterwards for the chemical notion of acid strength. The spelling stays close to its root: a single c, a single d, and the familiar -ity ending that signals a state or quality.

How the word is built

• acid (from Latin acidus: sour)
• -ity (noun suffix forming a quality or state)