1 having a bitter taste like the taste of a lemon or of fruit that is not ripe:
sour apples * a sour flavour
OPPSWEET
seealsoSWEET-AND-SOUR
2 (especially of milk) having an unpleasant taste or smell because it is not fresh:
to turn / go sour * sour milk / cream * a sour smell
3 (of people) not cheerful; bad-tempered and unpleasant:
a sour and disillusioned woman * a sour face / smile * The meeting ended on a sour note with several people walking out.
sourly adverb:
'Who asked you?' he said sourly.
sourness noun [U]:
the sourness of the fruit * his increasing sourness
IDIOMS
go / turn sour to stop being pleasant or satisfactory:
Their relationship soon went sour.
sour grapes (saying) used to show that you think sb is jealous and is pretending that sth is not important:
He said he didn't want the job anyway, but that's just sour grapes.
Part of speech: verb
1 (of relationships, attitudes, people, etc.) to change so that they become less pleasant or friendly than before; to make sth do this:
[V] The atmosphere at the house soured. * [VN] The disagreement over trade tariffs has soured relations between the two countries.
2 [V, VN] if milk sours or if sth sours it, it becomes sour and has an unpleasant taste or smell
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for sour is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is sour a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, sour is tagged as adjective.
Does sour appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — sour appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
