sour

Questions about sour

What is another word for sour?

It depends which sour you mean. In the sense “smelling of fermentation or staleness”, the synonyms are rancid. Across all 11 senses there are 22 distinct synonyms, and they are not interchangeable with each other — this page lists them under the sense each one belongs to.

What is the opposite of sour?

The recorded antonyms are sweet, sweeten. Opposites are sense-specific too: this page shows which meaning each one is the opposite of, because a word rarely has a single opposite that holds for all of its senses.

Why are the synonyms for sour split into groups?

Because sour carries 11 recorded senses and each has its own set of substitutes. A single flat list would put words from unrelated meanings side by side with nothing to tell them apart, which is exactly how a writer picks the wrong one. The grouping comes from WordNet's synsets, not from an editorial judgement of ours.

Does this page cover every sense of sour?

It covers the 10 senses that carry a synonym, antonym, broader or narrower term. The remaining 1 sense has none recorded, so it is left off a thesaurus page and shown in full on the word page instead.

Where do the synonyms for sour come from?

From Princeton University's WordNet, a lexical database maintained by lexicographers since 1985. A synonym here means a word form that shares a synset with this word — a set of forms interchangeable in one recorded context. Nothing on this page is generated by a language model.

Other views of sour

• Full entry for sourAll 11 senses, with examples, usage labels, syllables and pronunciation.
• Rhymes for sourWords matching from the last stressed vowel onward, grouped by syllable count.
• Thesaurus homeHow WordNet synsets work, and the collections built for synonym work.