Sourish

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Having a mildly sour flavor or quality, neither fully sour nor completely neutral
2. Tasting or seeming somewhat acid, sharp, or sour without being intensely so
3. Slightly tart or acidic in flavor, falling between sweet and distinctly sour

Etymology: Sourish is a plain piece of word-building: the adjective "sour" with the suffix "-ish", meaning "somewhat sour" or "rather sour." The suffix goes back to Old English "-isc," which meant "of the nature of" or "belonging to," and which is also the source of "English" and "Scottish" in their older forms. Its ancestry runs back through Proto-Germanic to a very ancient root, but in English it simply attaches to a base word to soften it. The base word, "sour," traces back to Old English "sūr," which literally described the taste of sharp, acidic things and was also used of anything that had gone off or turned. Its roots lie in a Proto-Indo-European word for the sensation of sourness, which is why so many European languages have similar-sounding words for the same taste. The form "sourish" first appeared in Middle English as "sourisch" and several spelling variants, showing that speakers had been applying the suffix to "sour" for centuries before the modern spelling settled in.

Synonyms: tart, tangy, acidic

Antonyms: sweet, bland