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adjective
Sour  adj.  (compar. sourer; superl. sourest)  
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. "A sour countenance." "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. "Sour adversity."
5.
Cold and unproductive; as, sour land; a sour marsh.
Sour dock (Bot.), sorrel.
Sour gourd (Bot.), 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 (Bot.) See Turelo.
Sour plum (Bot.), the edible acid fruit of an Australian tree (Owenia venosa); also, the tree itself, which furnished a hard reddish wood used by wheelwrights.
Synonyms: Acid; sharp; tart; acetous; acetose; harsh; acrimonious; crabbed; currish; peevish.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sour" Quotes from Famous Books



... porter, Alyrus, brought the food in on huge trays, roast kid and vegetables, green salad fresh from the market in the Forum Boarium, dressed with oil from the groves of Lucca and vinegar made of sour red wine. Then came a delicious pudding, made from honey brought from Hymetus in Greece to add luxury to the food of the already too luxurious Romans, and fruit strawberries, dipped in fine ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark

... after all; that she was but nineteen; that, though already a widow, she did not mourn her young husband as one who could not be comforted; and that she must soon have been furnished with merrier music than the psalms, for another of the sour comments of the time is, "Our Queen weareth the dule [weeds], but she can ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... little flask, It soon grows acid:—so when man, Living through Life's most lengthened span. His joys all drain'd or turn'd to tears, Sinks to the lees of fourscore years, And sees approach Death's darksome hour— No wonder if he's somewhat sour! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various

... wrung her hands, and fell into a swoon. The Devil made a sour face at her exclamation, and Faustus, laughing, rubbed her wrinkled brows. After she had recovered herself, she shed a torrent of tears, and shrieked a thousand curses against ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... trick of ending with an implied question lent a subtle meaning to his utterance, and he helped it with covert glance and sour smile. Thus might Caesar Borgia ask some minion if he could use a dagger. But Royson was too humiliated by his blunder to pay heed to hidden meanings. He grasped the card in his muddied fingers, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... whose love there lay no shame, with radiant eyes and blushing face, held out her hand to Sapt. She said nothing, but no man could have missed her meaning, who had ever seen a woman in the exultation of love. A sour, yet sad, smile passed over the old soldier's face, and there was tenderness in his voice, as bending to kiss ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... crime against the school rules, young ladies," she began. "It is a crime against common sense. Besides, I take a pride in the fact that Briarwood Hall supplies a sufficient and a well-served table. Fruit at times between meals is all very well. But a sour pickle and a piece of angel cake at eleven or twelve o'clock at night would soon break down the digestive faculties of a ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson

... your own. I want to get up a fight in this here neighbourhood, which would be sure to bring plenty of people to my house, for a week before and after it takes place; and as people can't come without drinking, I think I could, during one fortnight, get off for the brewer all the sour and unsaleable liquids he now has, which people wouldn't drink at any other time, and by that means, do you see, liquidate my debt; then, by means of betting, making first all right, do you see, I have no doubt that I could put something handsome into my pocket and yours, for I should wish you ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... wine, according to the circumstances of the person. The country people during harvest make their dinner of coarse bread, to which they add a few cloves of garlic, a little goat's-milk cheese, and sour wine diluted with water. Many live on bread alone, with wine. Supper is generally a substantial meal, consisting more or less of the same materials as are used for dinner, salad and wine never ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... to-morrow or next day—good; I congratulate you. Salute the good land for me and present my respectful compliments to vegetables that have taste and fruit that is not sour—to the sunshine, in fact, and to everything that ripens and sweetens ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... see why I say so. I fear I am getting sour. For certainly, Polly's mother didn't marry Polly to me. I fell in love with her, the rest followed. Old Gnu says that it's true Polly's mother didn't marry her, but she ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis

... in his large armoury, weapons faintly glittering all about him in the changeful light. His face was disfigured by the marks of weeping; he looked sour and sad; nor did he rise to greet his visitor, but bowed, and bade the man begone. That kind of general tenderness which served the Countess for both heart and conscience, sharply smote her at this spectacle of grief and weakness; she began immediately to enter into the spirit of her part; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to me, Ruth, than she would have been, if this vision had never troubled me? My old friend John, who might so easily have treated me with coldness and neglect, is he less cordial to me? The world about me, is there less good in that? Are my words to be harsh and my looks to be sour, and is my heart to grow cold, because there has fallen in my way a good and beautiful creature, who but for the selfish regret that I cannot call her my own, would, like all other good and beautiful creatures, make ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... are people in this world who cannot endure romance and beauty; people who would paint the sky a dingy brown if they could, and smudge the glory of the summer sunsets. I do not love such people, and I hope you don't, reader. I verily believe their blood is green and sour, and that they do not see this lovely world of ours as you and I do, through rose-tinted glasses, but that to them it must appear an ugly olive green, as it would to us if we gazed upon it through a piece of bottle glass. No; we shall keep the brave boy of the Orient, and still read Mrs. Hemans' ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables

... produced by the eyes in visual perception could not also have been united together as one visual perception of the things [Footnote ref 1]; moreover if there were no permanent cognizer then by the sight of a sour fruit one could not be reminded of its sour taste. If consciousness belonged to the senses only, then there would be no recognition, for the experience of one could not be recognized by another. If it is said that the unity of sensations ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... is a very superior sort of person. In another environment she might have been a big, strong woman. She's amazing, considering the sickly, sycophantic atmosphere she's been brought up in. Now, I want to see her married. She's thoroughly discontented and unhappy. She's becoming sour and cynical. WE must get her married. It's ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... the party called a halt and they sat down to eat some of the cassava and manioc cakes they had brought with them. The meal was washed down with a sour drink—something like buttermilk—contained in a huge earthen jar that one of the inferior tribe carried. They were in the midst of it when one of the hunters sprang to his feet with ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... They spent a sour twenty-five minutes waiting for the connection. Roger went out to talk with Warner, while Aubrey fumed in the back office. He could not sit still, and paced the little room in a fidget of impatience, tearing his watch out of his pocket every few minutes. ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... he hardly could be more tenderly treated or beloved than before this adventure; but if the freshest water, the prickliest furze,—if bowls of sour milk;—if a triple necklace of shells,—if brushing and grooming,—if soft pats from childish fingers, and sweet names murmured in his ears by girlish voices can make a camel happy, then is Solimin the happiest of heries. Solimin no longer, ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various

... he trusts his eyes, and not his instinct. During this most sour weather of the year, the anemone blossoms; and, almost immediately after, the fairy pencil, the spring beauty, the dog-tooth violet, and the true violet. In clouds and fog, and rain and snow, and all discouragement, Nature pushes on her forces with progressive haste and rapidity. Before ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger

... one won't never come back. All the same, if you gents want to chew the fat with this feller I'm goin' slummin' with me friend Joey Mouthgargle Nabisco Whoozis. Then I won't be round here to make no sour-caustic remarks and ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel

... of fare at his hotel then," Mr. Ferrars said with a laugh. "I have had nothing but lard and bread, sour heavy bread too, or lard and biscuit, or biscuit without the lard, since I arrived at Seal Cove. But I think he need not have charged such high prices for the stuff if ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... which should produce that wonderful growth is poured into this cup. The pulque gatherer, with his long gourd collecting-tube, and skin carrying-bottle, goes from plant to plant and gathers the agua miel—honey-water. Fermented, it becomes the whitish, dirty, ropy, sour-tasting, bad-smelling stuff so dear to the indians. And the Otomi are fond of pulque. We were compelled to do our work in the mornings; in the afternoons everyone was drunk and limp and useless ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... for some added clothing, the very brethren of David. Of necessity they are hardy, simple livers, superstitious, fearful, given to seeing visions, and almost without speech. It needs the bustle of shearings and copious libations of sour, weak wine to restore the human faculty. Petite Pete, who works a circuit up from the Ceriso to Red Butte and around by way of Salt Flats, passes year by year on the mesa trail, his thick hairy chest thrown open to all weathers, ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin

... 'What! Master Tibbald? Is our native wine so sour as all that?' He drained his own cup, which held ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... a large one, it consisted of only three beds. One bed stood empty, the second was occupied by Pashka, and on the third sat an old man with sour eyes, who kept coughing and spitting into a mug. From Pashka's bed part of another ward could be seen with two beds; on one a very pale wasted-looking man with an india-rubber bottle on his head was asleep; on the other a peasant ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... I should know but I don't. I should have known what was wrong so I could have done something about it. It just went sour, I guess." ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman

... of thanks and less of thought, I strive to make my matters meet; To seek what ancient sages sought, Physic and food in sour and sweet: To take what passes in good part, And keep ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various

... as nice as it had seemed an hour ago; and when supper was ready, that gingerbread was burnt, and, as true as you live, the preserves were sour! There was nothing in the little covered dish but cheese, which Flaxie "despised;" and she wished she hadn't stayed to tea, for it was a very ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May

... fancied so because your sin had found you out. I must go and see how the poor woman is. I don't want to reproach you at all, now you are sorry, but I should like you just to think that you have been helping to make that poor old woman wicked. She is naturally of a sour disposition, and you have made it sourer still, and no doubt made her hate everybody more than she was already inclined to do. You have been working against God ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... his peroration—which, by the way, he used later with overwhelming success at a meeting of electors—while they sat, flushed and uneasy, in sour disgust. After many, many words, he reached for the cloth-wrapped stick and thrust one hand in his bosom. This—this was the concrete symbol of their land—worthy of all honor and reverence! Let no boy look on this flag who did not purpose to worthily add to its imperishable ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... said," replied Stephanus, "and yet the journey quite altered you. How often before that I used to think when I heard you laugh that the sound must surely please our Father in Heaven. And now? You used to be like a singing bird, and now you go about silent, you look sour and morose, and evil ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... climbed a tree, ate the sweet apples himself, and threw the sour ones down to the cattle of ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... noise like the hoarse sigh of a creature in distress resounded through the cavern, and breathless, rapid, terrified, a fox passed like a flash of lightning before the fugitives, leaped over the boat and disappeared, leaving behind its sour scent, which was perceptible for several seconds under the low ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... upon him the primary responsibility for the new Indian gospel of murder which is being preached against him? Mr. Montagu was well inspired in protesting against such "hostile, unsympathetic, and cowardly criticism" as was conveyed in Mr. Mackarness's pamphlet; but this pamphlet was mere sour milk compared with the vitriol which the native Press had been allowed to pour forth day after day on the British official in India before any action was taken by Government ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... agitation by taking part in the dance with great energy. He avoided her eyes for he had seen a sour expression on her face. But when they met in the long chain he was surprised to feel his hand firmly pressed. She looked at him from under her brows for a moment quizzically until he smiled. Then, just as the chain was about to start ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... way, was made up in another, and that was universal peace in our little church. We had no disputes and wrangling about the nature and equality of the holy, blessed, and undivided Trinity, no niceties in doctrine, or schemes of church government; no sour or morale dissenters to impose more sublimated notions upon us; no pedant sophisters to confound us with unintelligible mysteries: but, instead of all this, we enjoyed the most certain guide to Heaven; that is, the word of ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... while before they begin to decay. I don't know what it is,—whether a spontaneous change, mental or bodily, or whether it is thorough experience of the thanklessness of critical honesty,—but it is a fact, that most writers, except sour and unsuccessful ones, get tired of finding fault at about the time when they are beginning to grow old. As a general thing, I would not give a great deal for the fair words of a critic, if he is himself ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... are mostly optimists at heart; we love to have things comfortable, and to pretend that they are comfortable when they obviously are not. The brisk Anglo-Saxon, if he cannot reach the grapes, does not say that the grapes are sour, but protests that he does not really care about grapes. A story is told of a great English proconsul who desired to get a loan from the Treasury of the Government over which he practically, though not nominally, presided. He went to the Financial Secretary ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... not so cold As the bright smile he sees me win, Nor the host's oldest wine so old As our poor gabble, sour ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... encouragement to the pen of an imitator, than those which are composed of observation and reflection. Here I mean such imitators as Rowe was of Shakespear, or as Horace hints some of the Romans were of Cato, by bare feet and sour faces. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... learned men. I suppose, ye think because ye carry up the Bible, that ye ken a' that's in't," returned Meg, with a sneer of her voice that might have turned milk sour. The expression of the emotions is fine and positive in the kitchens of the farm ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... luckily, a squad of soldiers came along the road with a small cask of wine in a cart. One of the staff-officers instantly appropriated the keg, and proceeded to share his prize most generously. Never had I tasted anything so refreshing and delicious, but as the wine was the ordinary sour stuff drunk by the peasantry of northern France, my appreciation must be ascribed to my famished condition rather than to any virtues ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... over, over! He had not time to spare for her—no time at all!... One night every, six weeks, after the autumn.... Yes, my dear sir, I at once accept your honourable proposals with pleasure. Indeed, for myself, I desire nothing better! I will go on turning sour; I will go on giving music lessons and growing imbecile in this hole of a town.... You will fiddle away, turn women's heads, travel, be rich, famous and happy—and every four or six weeks I may hope to be taken for one night to some shabby room where you entertain your women ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler

... by Ghyllfoot this afternoon, and they were looking very sour and rushy," he said. "They were drained ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... pleasing or displeasing; though the smell of a rose and violet, both sweet, are certainly very distinct ideas. Nor are the different tastes, that by our palates we receive ideas of, much better provided with names. Sweet, bitter, sour, harsh, and salt are almost all the epithets we have to denominate that numberless variety of relishes, which are to be found distinct, not only in almost every sort of creatures, but in the different parts of the same plant, fruit, or animal. The ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke

... by was the tent of the men of battle from the marshy borders of the Waale-Boght and the country thereabouts. These were of a sour aspect, by reason that they lived on crabs, which abound in these parts. They were the first institutors of that honorable order of knighthood called Fly-market shirks, and, if tradition speak true, did likewise introduce ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... last five year or more; I knoo 'im when 'is Syd went to the war. A proud ole man 'e was. But I've watched 'im, An' seen 'is look when people spoke uv Jim: As sour a look as most coves want to see. It made me glad that this 'ere ...
— Digger Smith • C. J. Dennis

... is not very happy, going downstairs. She knows what has undoubtedly happened the moment the door was shut—and a little twinge of something very like the taste of sour grapes goes through her as she thinks of those two young people so reprehensibly glad at being even for the moment ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... the Lat. root ac-, sharp; acere, to be sour), the name loosely applied to any sour substance; in chemistry it has a more precise meaning, denoting a substance containing hydrogen which may be replaced by metals with the formation of salts. An acid may therefore be regarded as a salt of hydrogen. Of the general ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... so hopeful a little while ago, I felt quite discouraged when a man, very sour and grumbling—and he was a Jew—a "Son of Mercy" as a certain song said—refused to tell mamma where Schidorsky lived. I then believed that the whole world must have united against us; and decided to show my defiant indifference by leaving the world to be ...
— From Plotzk to Boston • Mary Antin

... good drink, sweeter than the sour cider of which grandmother gives me a sup. Aunt Lou says it is as sour as grandmother, who brews it. Aunt Lucy is having sweet drinks now, and pasties, and all manner of nice things. Why can't we go to London, mother, ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... observes that 'when indigence does not produce overt acts of vice, it palsies every virtue.'[250] The temptations to which the poor man is exposed, and the sense of injustice due to an ignorance of the true cause of misery, tend to 'sour the disposition, to harden the heart, and deaden the moral sense.' Unfortunately, the means which have been adopted to lessen the evil have tended to increase it. In the first place, there was the master-evil of the poor-laws. Malthus points out the demoralising effects of these ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... generations associated with our fortunes, especially as most of the old furniture is still there. My sedulous avoidance hitherto of all relating to our family vicissitudes has been, I own, stupid conduct for an intelligent being; but impossible grapes are always sour, and I have unconsciously adopted Radical notions to obliterate disappointed hereditary instincts. But these have a trick of re-establishing themselves as one gets older, and the castle and what it contains have a ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... strawberries, two slices of orange, some mint jelly cut in cubes, and sweetened bamboo slices in the middle of the list. Then more fish courses, many of them bright-colored shell fish which are always rather tough. Then a very nice mixture of sour cucumber salad and little pieces of lobster or crab, very nice and any sour thing is good with these many courses of fish. At the end bowls of rice, which is brought in in a big lacquer dish with a cover looking some ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey

... to know him; he is too cross and sour. I have seen him walking sometimes with Lila, and mamma has him at her parties and dinners; but Hattie and I never see the company unless we peep, and, above all things, I hate peeping! It is ungenteel and vulgar; only poor people peep. Mr. ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... of the bombardment of Dresden without horror," says he; "nor of many other things I have seen. Misfortunes naturally sour men's temper [even royal men's]; and long continued, without interval, at last extinguish humanity." "We are now in a most critical and dangerous situation, which cannot long last: one lucky event, approaching to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... dressing, and on going down we found Mr Gunson waiting for us, and looking more sour, fierce, and ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... in the day, and the aspect of affairs at Le Grand Soleil, where we stopped, was by no means exhilarating. Having passed through the black, dirty kitchen, and climbed the dingy staircase, we were shown several rooms, which we could not have, by a very sour-looking old woman, who tried to persuade us to content ourselves with apartments without fire-places. This we resisted determinedly, suggesting that ladies had a right to supersede male travellers, and, assisted by the eloquence of our invaluable cocher, we at length obtained ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... 'ain't got any love for on-lookers, and we'd better not stay in here long." Jimmy's voice was cautious, but his eyes merry, and, glancing in the direction of the sour and snappy person watching each movement of each worker, I agreed with him that it was not well to linger. The room was big and bare, its benches filled with white-faced workers, and the autocrat who presided over it seemed ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... first the knowledge of universals by acquaintance. It is obvious, to begin with, that we are acquainted with such universals as white, red, black, sweet, sour, loud, hard, etc., i.e. with qualities which are exemplified in sense-data. When we see a white patch, we are acquainted, in the first instance, with the particular patch; but by seeing many white patches, we easily learn to abstract the whiteness which they all have in common, and in ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell

... this respect. One of the first things of their code of ethics is "Thou shalt not advertise." They mean paid newspaper advertising. The man who originated this idea evidently did not have the money to pay for any, and it was a case of sour grapes. ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter

... cautiously (for snakes are very fond of coiling under its shade) he opens the centre, and finds, close to the ground, a group of whitish fruits, nearly two inches long; peels carefully off the skin, which is beset with innumerable sharp hairs, and eats the sour-sweet refreshing pulp: but not too often, for there are always hairs enough left to make the tongue bleed if more than one ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... party of slave merchants, who had just loaded their goods for Senaar from the boat on the camels, asked me to dinner, and, oh! how delicious it felt to sit on a mat among the camels and strange bales of goods and eat the hot tough bread, sour milk and dates, offered with such stately courtesy. We got quite intimate over our leather cup of sherbet (brown sugar and water), and the handsome jet-black men, with features as beautiful as those of the young Bacchus, described the distant ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... pretty regularly into the Pamphilon, a restaurant within a stone's throw of Oxford Circus, of the familiar type that exhibits outside its door a bill of fare with prices appended, to be studied by those who count their shillings and pence as we did. We had got beyond the days when no wines are sour and when tough meat passes muster, if there is only plenty of it; we wanted a sound dinner, and we got it at the Pamphilon; to wind up we adjourned to the coffee-room and talked and ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles

... good look at him. There was something about his air that impressed me as both lugubrious and humorous; and in this I was right, for I learned later that he was one of those rare people who can sing a comic song with immense success while preserving a sour countenance, like a Puritan preacher's. His eyes were a little sunken, his fingers long and nervous; but I fancied he looked a good fellow at heart, for all that, though foolishly impulsive. He was a punctilious gentleman, I felt ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... the meeting, therefore, secretly confident that old Heythorp had got something out of this transaction which would enable him to make a substantial proposal to his creditors. So that when the old man had declared that he was going to make none, something had turned sour in his heart, and he had said to himself: "All right, you old rascal! You don't know C. V." The cavalier manner of that beggarly old rip, the defiant look of his deep little eyes, had put a polish on the rancour of one who prided himself on letting no man get the better of him. All that evening, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... oatmeal, Hamish," says he, "there's many a lusty lad reared on worse; but we'll be hivin' tatties and herrin' for a change, and plenty o' sour milk tae slocken the ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars

... Lulu said, with a look of surprise and perplexity. Then after a moment's cogitation, "I suppose they do want to make all they can out of us, and that would be the reason there was so little on the table; but would it have cost any more to have it cooked properly? The bread was both sour and heavy, and the butter so strong that I'd rather go ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley

... The national dish of the peasants; it is made with beetroot and bread, tastes slightly sour, and is ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... enough to get him out of the way grew clearer and clearer, in spite of the apparent friendliness with which he had treated him up to the present time. But now, hour by hour, Zaidos was conscious of a sort of sour look of hatred which seemed to grow plainer and plainer in Velo's sharp face. Zaidos had an uncomfortable feeling that he must keep a watchful eye on Velo. It was nothing but an instinct, but even so, he felt it, ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske

... grapes are sour; and were one rich, one would do even as the rich are wont to do: but still, I am a minute philosopher. And therefore, this afternoon, after I have done the same work, visited the same people, and said the same ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... seem'st to wrong my soul too much, Thinking that Studioso would account That fortune sour which thou accountest sweet; Not[133] any life to me can sweeter be, Than happy ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... for the small room he got from his Portuguese landlady, Maria Silva, a virago and a widow, hard working and harsher tempered, rearing her large brood of children somehow, and drowning her sorrow and fatigue at irregular intervals in a gallon of the thin, sour wine that she bought from the corner grocery and saloon for fifteen cents. From detesting her and her foul tongue at first, Martin grew to admire her as he observed the brave fight she made. There were but four rooms in the little house—three, when Martin's was subtracted. One of these, the parlor, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... ourselves why this should be—why these poems should "keep", apparently for ever, when the average modern poem turns sour overnight. And though all generalizations are dangerous I believe there is one which explains our problem, a very simple one.... namely, that the eyes of the old ballad-singers were turned outwards, while the eyes of the modern ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols

... is, thank God! more familiar; but it is not less disliked and 'blasphemed.' A total abstainer from intoxicants will not get the good word of the distiller or brewer or consumer of liquor. He will be called faddist, narrow, sour-visaged, and so on and so on. 'You may know a genius because all the dunces make common cause against him,' said Swift. You may know a Christian after Christ's pattern because all the children of the flesh are in league to laugh at him and pelt him ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... placable. There is something incongruous and absurd in the pacifist of British descent. He has fighting in his blood, and when his creed, or his nervous sensibility to physical horrors, denies him the use of fighting, his blood turns sour. He can argue, and object, and criticize, but he cannot lead. All that he can offer us in effect is eternal quarrels in place of ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh

... regret—I shall return to it without pleasure. I am like Adam, the first convict sentenced to transportation, but I have no Eve, and have eaten no apple but what was sour as a crab" (letter to F. Hodgson, Falmouth, June 25, 1809, Letters, 1898, i. 230). If this Confessio Amantis, with which compare the "Stanzas to a Lady, on leaving England," is to be accepted as bona fide, he leaves ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... rightly apprehend the Greek of Nicetas's receipts, their favorite dishes were boiled buttocks of beef, salt pork and peas, and soup made of garlic and sharp or sour ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... dog-eared dilworth in hand, must be treated by his teacher as a free enlightened citizen. But even without this, where is there in any country a schoolmaster daring enough to use a ratan, or birch rod, to that unruly darling from whose mother he knows his evening reception will be sour looks, and tea tinged with sky-blue, but would not rather let the boy make fox-and-geese instead of, ciphering, say his lesson when he pleased, and have cream and short-cake for his portion. Another disagreeable thing is, that fond and anxious as they are ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan

... perchance serve to make you think yourself better than others, quibble over texts, wear sour looks, domineer over others' consciences or give your own over to bondage; stifle your scruples, follow religious forms for fashion or gain, do good in the hope of escaping future punishment?—oh, then, if you proclaim yourself the follower of Buddha, Moses, Mahomet, or even Christ, ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... of displaying itself, and one wondered at the combined prudery and sentiment with which the subject was approached, while the most offensive part of their conventionalism was the sex-obsession, which was clotted, like cream turned sour, on all their judgments. ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... and bid the housemaid take care not to make the bed upon an exact level, but let it slope from the pillow to the footposts, at a declivity of about eighteen inches.—And hark ye—get me a jug of barley-water, to place by my bedside, with the squeeze of a lemon—or stay, you will make it as sour as Beelzebub—bring the lemon on a saucer, and I ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... developed an inordinate propensity for talking. These may have been the sentiments of Ariel, safe at the Bermoothes; but to state them is to risk at least ten years in the knotty entrails of an oak, and it is sufficient to point out, that if Prospero is wise, he is also self-opinionated and sour, that his gravity is often another name for pedantic severity, and that there is no character in the play to whom, during some part of it, he is not studiously disagreeable. But his Milanese countrymen are not even disagreeable; they are simply dull. ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... on hand, each awaiting his turn eagerly, yet trying to seem blase. Some drank greedily, others tasted the sour wine in little sips like old experts; but all took care to turn their backs to us while drinking, as if from bashfulness. Then they went to ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... the soil is sour, as it may be, you can sweeten it up. There is a certain farm sweetener ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw

... removed the remains of my supper. Then she set on the table glasses and a bottle of tisane they had bought on the way home. We drank the sour sweet champagne as if it were liquid gold and clinked glasses, and with Narcisse all talked and barked together. It was ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... his cap and throwing it down] lie thou there, carnal device! and I will go look for a barber and be despoiled, like a topsy-turvy Samson, not to lose strength, but to gain it. I thank heaven that our camp did yesterday fall in dry places, for there were many of these sour-visaged soldiers called me Jonah, and I did well to escape ducking in a horse-pond. Soft, here be some of them coming. Yestere'en I committed sacrilege in a knapsack, and stole a small Bible from amid great plunder ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... a bottle of gasoline in one hand and a bundle of laundry under his arm. Looks sprucer and snappier than I'd ever seen him before, too. And that sour, surly look is all gone. ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... be a good man. Little Arthur had a garden of his own, and in it grew an apple tree, which was then very small, but to his great joy had upon it two fine rosy-cheeked apples, the first ones it had produced. Arthur wished to taste of them very much to know if they were sweet or sour; but he was not a selfish boy, and he says to his grandmother ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"

... 'tis thy work. By Church, by throne, by hearth, by every good That's in the Town of Time, I see thee lurk, And e'er some shadow stays where thou hast stood. Thou hand'st sweet Socrates his hemlock sour; Thou sav'st Barabbas in that hideous hour, And ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... be remarked, the sour Crout kept during the voyage, in the highest perfection, and was often eat as a sallad with vinegar, in preference to recent, cut vegetables from the shore. A cask of this grand antiscorbutic was kept ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards

... all three, in turn, with a very sour face, and walked out. "Surely," I thought to myself, "this brother of Oscar's is not beginning well! First, the daughter takes offense at him, and now the father follows her example. Even on the other side of the Atlantic, Mr. Nugent Dubourg exercises a malignant influence, and disturbs the family ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... vouchsafed a rather sour smile to these manifestations of disposition on the part of both ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... nauseous cure! thou cloyest whom thou should'st please; And, when thou cur'st, then thou art the disease. When hearts are loose, thy chain our bodies ties; Love couples friends, but marriage enemies. If love like mine continues after thee, 'Tis soon made sour, and turned by jealousy; No sign of love in jealous men remains, But that which sick men have ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... and a life of foiled endeavour, of disappointed hope. Even now there was a disappointment. His poems did not find a publisher: what publisher can take the risk of adding another volume of poetry to the enormous stock of verse brought out at the author's expense? This did not sour or sadden him: he took Montaigne's advice, 'not to make too much marvel of our own fortunes.' His biographer, hearing in the winter of 1893 that Murray's illness was now considered hopeless, though ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray

... manner of wickedness to its defenders. It must indeed be admitted by the really enlightened of every name, that their conduct in this particular amply justifies pious Matthew Henry's confessions, that 'of all the christian graces, zeal is most apt to turn sour.' ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... dear relations," said Quilp, with a sour look. He put his hand into his breast, and pulled out a bag. "Here, I brought it myself, as, being in gold, it was too large and heavy for Nell to carry. I would I knew in what good investment all these supplies are sunk. But you are a deep man, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... fair any way you look at it," remarked another girl, who was standing by. "It can't be right to try and make anybody sour just for spite, and as for Minnie, you can't make her sour whatever you do, so it is only lost time. She's just sweetness itself always, though she has a quick temper, and lets it get roused very easily now and then. But it can't be right to make any one worse, we are all bad enough for that ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden

... things. I shall like to see Aunt Anne, and I shall like to see Jack at home; and meanwhile will you think the matter over, and give me a lead? I don't want to leave Cambridge at all, but I would rather do that than go sour, as some people do!" ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... litter, Tears a handful sour and bitter; All a fool the author hold, But their zest ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... three important species of gum in the South, the principal one usually being distinguished as "red" or "sweet" gum (see Fig. 10). The next in importance being the "tupelo" or "bay poplar," and the least of the trio is designated as "black" or "sour" gum (see Fig. 11). Up to the year 1900 little was known of gum as a wood for cooperage purposes, but by the continued advance in price of the woods used, a few of the most progressive manufacturers, ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner

... one would think that the grapes were sour even for the sheriff; nevertheless he came riding to us soon after, and without more ado asked my daughter in marriage for his huntsman. Moreover, he promised to build him a house of his own in the forest; item, to give him pots and kettles, crockery, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... Chatenoeuf, you are une enfant. I will no longer trouble myself with looking out for a husband for you. You shall die a sour old maid," and Monsieur Gironac left the room, pretending ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... drizzle came on, and the streets became deserted. The hotel was a wretched one and the meal furnished us was in character with it. We were waited on by a sour, taciturn old man who bore a dirty towel on his arm, as a sort of badge of office, I presume. He nodded or shook his head as the case might demand, but not a word could I extract from him. At the close of our meal, which we dallied over, waiting for the rain to cease, I called for the bill, ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards

... got real tricks to do, tricks they don't do, tricks they hate. And they mightn't be feeling good—got a touch of cold, or mange, or are sour-balled. What are you going to do? Apologize to the audience? Besides, on the stage, the programme runs like clockwork. Got to start performing on the tick of the clock, and anywhere from one to seven turns a day, all depending what kind ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true, too. She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and her face was yellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another. Her father had held a position under the English Government and had always been busy and ill himself, and her mother had been a great beauty who cared ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... to buy them a load of wood and a garment or two the next day; and they were all so bright, and so merry, and so thankful, and so good, that, when I got home that night, I was mightily amazed that, instead of going to bed sour at holidays, I was in a state of great contentment in regard to holidays. In fact, I was really merry. I whistled. I sang. I do believe I cut a caper. The poor wretches I had left had been so merry ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... trees, in this manner—they give three or four strokes with a hatchet on the trunk of a tree, and set vessels to receive the distilling juice, which is very sweet, but in a few days grows strong, yet will not keep long, for in fifteen days it grows sour. One tree will yield near a gallon in twenty-four hours. The commodities of this country are gold, ostrich feathers, amber, gums, civit ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown

... thought of the painter's hospitality, he proceeded to the studio; but he was informed in sour tones that monsieur Goujaud would not ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... in which women drudged, and little children were weary toilers, and the result was not of a high grade. Statistics have shown that seventy-five percent of the home-made bread of America was a poor product. I lived as a child in the days of home-made bread. Once in so often the batch of bread "went sour," and there seemed to be an unfailing supply of stale bread which "must be eaten first." Those who cry out against a city of bakers' bread, have never lived in a country of the home-made loaf. It is the Adamistic philosophy, so complimentary to Eve, that leads us to expect that all housewives ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch

... With sour-featured Whigs the Grassmarket was crammed, As if half the West had set tryst to be hanged; There was spite in each look, there was fear in each e'e, As they watched for ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... up unpacking. She went to the window, with a purely literary thought of village charm—hollyhocks and lanes and apple-cheeked cottagers. What she saw was the side of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church—a plain clapboard wall of a sour liver color; the ash-pile back of the church; an unpainted stable; and an alley in which a Ford delivery-wagon had been stranded. This was the terraced garden below her boudoir; this was to be ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... aught to dispel their anxiety; on the contrary, it is intensified by the behaviour of the savages, who are again in a sour temper after their night's carouse. For, having eaten up all their gatherings of yesterday, they are again hungry. Young and old, there are nearly a hundred of them, all ravenous gluttons, to say nothing of the swarm of curs requiring ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid

... intellectual suggestions if he had been posted in a Wiltshire field to frighten crows with a rattle, instead of being set here in the highway of the world's brain-movement, an agent of students and philosophers. Thorpe wondered if in his time he could have looked such a vacant and sour young fool. No—no. That could not be. Boys were different in his day—and especially boys in book-shops. They read something and knew something of what they handled. They had some sort of aspirations, fitful and vague as these might be, to become in their ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... to us, lived a high official of the English service. He was a sour, cross old man and did not like pets. Even the monkeys in the trees knew better than to go into his ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman

... a sour, small, bilious man, with a long face and very dark eyes; fifty-six years old, sound and active in body, and with an air somewhat between that of a shepherd and that of a man following the sea. He never laughed, that I heard; read long at the Bible; prayed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Served on china dishes upon a cloth-covered table, we had mounds of fried steaks and shoals of fried bacon; and a bushel, more or less, of sheepherder potatoes; and green peas and sliced peaches out of cans; and sour-dough biscuits as light as kisses and much more filling; and fresh butter and fresh milk; and coffee as black as your hat and strong as sin. How easy it is for civilized man to become primitive and comfortable in his way of ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... First, was a well-known man of letters in his time. He addressed to Hallam, in 1819, a work in two vols., entitled 'Letters from the North of Italy,' and escaped a prohibitory order from the Emperor of Austria by ingeniously changing his title to 'A Treatise upon Sour Krout,' &c. His other original works are, 'Apology addressed to the Travellers' Club; or, Anecdotes of Monkeys'; 'Thoughts and Recollections by one of the Last Century'; and 'Epistle to the Hon. J. Hookham Frere in Malta.' His translations ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... he writes one can see that he does not convince himself. Possibly, he admits, "after all, the grapes are sour"; and when some years after he did travel, how happy he was! At last, he says, triumphantly, "At last we too are crossing the Atlantic. At last the dream of forty years, please God, would be fulfilled, and I should ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... is de wild-goose nation, Whar old missus has sugar plantation— Sugar grows sweet but de plantation's sour, 'cause de nigger jump and run ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... going to urge Monsieur Joseph's weak constitution but in presence of that puny man with his thin, furry face, who might have stayed at home, I forebore. But I decided to avoid, in his company, those subjects in which I felt he was full of sour hostility and ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... hereabouts, said he, are resolved to turn over a new leaf with our wives, and your lord and master shall shew us the way, I can tell you that. But I see by your eyes, my sweet culprit, added he, and your complexion, you have had sour sauce to your ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... until tender in salt water; take out, lay on platter. Throw a handful of raisins in the salt water and a few whole cloves, allspice, stick cinnamon, with vinegar enough to give a sour taste, and a tablespoonful of sugar. Thicken with flour to the consistency of gravy; pour over fish. Serve cold. Fish may be served with mayonnaise dressing, cooked ...
— Recipes Tried and True • the Ladies' Aid Society



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