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Syllable division derived from spelling — this word is not in the pronouncing dictionary, so no phonetic transcription is shown rather than a guessed one.
acerb is an adjective meaning "sour or bitter in taste". It carries 2 recorded senses.
sour or bitter in taste
harsh or corrosive in tone
“an acerbic tone piercing otherwise flowery prose”
“a barrage of acid comments”
“her acrid remarks make her many enemies”
“bitter words”
“blistering criticism”
“caustic jokes about political assassination, talk-show hosts and medical ethics”
“a sulfurous denunciation”
“a vitriolic critique”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for acerb come from Princeton University’s WordNet. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.