Sour /(?)/

Sour

a.
  1. Having an acid or sharp, biting taste, like vinegar, and the juices of most unripe fruits; acid; tart.
    All sour things, as vinegar, provoke appetite.
  2. Changed, as by keeping, so as to be acid, rancid, or musty, turned.
  3. Disagreeable; unpleasant; hence; cross; crabbed; peevish; morose; as, a man of a sour temper; a sour reply.
    He was a scholar . . . Lofty and sour to them that loved him not, But to those men that sought him sweet as summer.
  4. Afflictive; painful.
  5. Cold and unproductive; as, sour land; a sour marsh.

Phrases & Compounds
Sour dock
sorrel.
Sour gourd
the gourdlike fruit Adansonia Gregorii, and Adansonia digitata; also, either of the trees bearing this fruit. See Adansonia.
Sour grapes
See under Grape.
Sour gum
See Turelo.
Sour plum
the edible acid fruit of an Australian tree (Owenia venosa); also, the tree itself, which furnished a hard reddish wood used by wheelwrights.

Sour

n.
  1. A sour or acid substance; whatever produces a painful effect.

Sour

v. t.
  1. To cause to become sour; to cause to turn from sweet to sour; as, exposure to the air sours many substances.
    So the sun's heat, with different powers, Ripens the grape, the liquor sours.
  2. To make cold and unproductive, as soil.
  3. To make unhappy, uneasy, or less agreeable.
    To sour your happiness I must report, The queen is dead.
  4. To cause or permit to become harsh or unkindly.
    Pride had not sour'd nor wrath debased my heart.
    — Harte.
  5. To macerate, and render fit for plaster or mortar; as, to sour lime for business purposes.

Sour

v. i.

imp. & p. p. Soured; p. pr. & vb. n. Souring

  1. To become sour; to turn from sweet to sour; as, milk soon sours in hot weather; a kind temper sometimes sours in adversity.
    They keep out melancholy from the virtuous, and hinder the hatred of vice from souring into severity.