Vinegar

How to spell vinegar

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce vinegar

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does vinegar mean?

1. nounA sour liquid made by fermenting wine, cider, or other alcohol, used in cooking and as a preservative.

Vinegar in a sentence

• She splashed a little vinegar over the chips before serving them.

• The recipe calls for two tablespoons of white wine vinegar in the dressing.

Where does vinegar come from?

Language of origin: French

Vinegar comes from the Old French vinaigre, which is simply a fusion of vin, meaning 'wine', and aigre, meaning 'sour' or 'sharp'. So the word literally means 'sour wine', a perfect description of what happens when wine is allowed to ferment a second time and turns acidic. The roots reach back to Latin, where vinum meant 'wine' and acer (also seen as acrem) meant 'sharp' or 'biting'; that same acer sits inside English words like 'acrid' and 'acid'. English took the term in during the 1300s, keeping the French spelling that fuses the two halves into one word. The unstressed final syllable is the spelling trap: although it sounds like it might end in '-ger', it descends from aigre and is written '-gar'.

How the word is built

• vin- (from Latin vinum: wine)
• -egar (from Old French aigre: sour)