Sour

How to spell sour

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sour

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sour mean?

1. adjectiveHaving a sharp, acidic taste, like lemon or vinegar, or having turned bad in this way.
2. adjectiveBad-tempered, resentful, or unpleasant in manner.
3. verbTo become or make unpleasant, bitter, or strained.

Sour in a sentence

• adjective

  The milk had gone sour after a week in the warm kitchen.

• adjective

  His sour mood lasted all morning after the meeting was cancelled.

• verb

  The dispute over money began to sour their long friendship.

• adjective

  The lemons were so sour that she added extra sugar to the recipe.

• adjective

  She gave a sour reply when asked to work the weekend again.

• verb

  A single bad review can sour the public mood toward a product.

Where does sour come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes straight from Old English 'sur', meaning sharp, tart, or acid to the taste, and it has stayed remarkably close to that original meaning for well over a thousand years. It belongs to a wide Germanic family, with close relatives such as German 'sauer' and Dutch 'zuur', and that shared ancestry is why German 'Sauerkraut' literally means 'sour cabbage'. The sense gradually widened from describing food and drink that had turned acidic to describing people, moods, and situations that had turned bitter or unpleasant. The spelling looks tricky because the 'our' ending is pronounced as a diphthong gliding into an 'r', much like 'flour' and 'hour', rather than the flat '-our' of 'colour'. Because it is a native word rather than a borrowing, it carries no Latin or French baggage, which is one reason it is spelled the same on both sides of the Atlantic.

How the word is built

• sour (a single Old English root meaning sharp or acid in taste); no prefix or suffix