sour
part of speech
adjective (sour, sourer, sourest); verb (sour, sours, soured, souring)
meaning for a pupil
1) Sour food has a sharp taste, like a lemon or vinegar. tree →
2) Milk turns sour when it goes bad. tree →
3) A sour person or mood is bad-tempered and unfriendly. tree →
4) To sour means to become worse or less friendly. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science lessons sour is one of the basic tastes (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami) and is caused by acids. In stories a sour face shows someone is cross. Phrases: «go sour», «turn sour», «sour cream», «sweet and sour», «sour grapes».
examples
- Lemons taste very sour. tree →
- The milk has gone sour, so don't drink it. tree →
- Sour sweets make my mouth tingle. tree →
- She gave me a sour look. tree →
- The game turned sour when they started cheating. tree →
- We had sweet and sour chicken for dinner. tree →
- Saying the prize was boring was just sour grapes. tree →
- He next flew to the anemones; these were rather sour to his taste. tree →
note
Opposite of sweet. «Sour grapes» = pretending you did not want something you could not get. Sour milk smells bad; do not drink it. Sour taste comes from acids, like citric acid in lemons. Rhymes with «power».
In the corpora
- Milk left out on a warm table goes sour because bacteria multiply fast in warmth and make acid; the fridge slows them down.
- That sharp, sour taste is the taste of an acid: lemons are full of citric acid.
- Acids are a big family of substances that taste sour and react with many things.
- Sour tastes come from acids; lemons contain citric acid, and sour sweets are dusted with acid powder that stings the tongue.
- Lick a lemon and it is sour; taste a tiny pinch of baking soda and it is bitter and soapy.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «sour» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.