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Sour   Listen
verb
Sour  v. t.  
1.
To cause to become sour; to cause to turn from sweet to sour; as, exposure to the air sours many substances. "So the sun's heat, with different powers, Ripens the grape, the liquor sours."
2.
To make cold and unproductive, as soil.
3.
To make unhappy, uneasy, or less agreeable. "To sour your happiness I must report, The queen is dead."
4.
To cause or permit to become harsh or unkindly. "Souring his cheeks." "Pride had not sour'd nor wrath debased my heart."
5.
To macerate, and render fit for plaster or mortar; as, to sour lime for business purposes.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sour" Quotes from Famous Books



... see it, one is interested, from curiosity, and then, afterwards, there's a sort of Dead Sea-fruitish, sour-grapes, autumn-leaves, sort of feeling! It's too remote from real life and yet it hasn't an uplifting effect. At any rate it always ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson

... But this word is unsuitable in so far as it suggests in English some unified and continuous mental state. Vinnana sometimes corresponds to thought and sometimes is hardly distinguished from perception, for it means awareness[413] of what is pleasant or painful, sweet or sour and so on. But the Pitakas continually insist[414] that it is not a unity and that its varieties come into being only when they receive proper nourishment or, as we should say, an adequate stimulus. Thus visual consciousness depends on the sight and on visible objects, auditory consciousness ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... had eaten five shillings' worth for three-and-sixpence, and drunk a good bottle of sour red wine apiece, I took him round to "Olympia," and there we saw the famous show they called the "Man in the Moon." This didn't cheer him up at all, and once during the evening he told me that he thought he'd soon be in the moon ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton

... of butter beaten to a cream with half a cup of sugar, one cup of Porto Rico molasses, one cup of thin sour cream or milk, three eggs, the whites and yolks beaten separately, two cups of berries, two and a half cups of flour, one teaspoonful of soda sifted with the flour. Bake as soft ...
— The Golden Age Cook Book • Henrietta Latham Dwight

... hallow the general ugliness—which is the true way, for beauty is life, and therefore infinitely deeper and more powerful than ugliness which is death. "A dram of sweet," says Spenser, "is worth a pound of sour."' ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... a sad flatterer, my dear Beaufort," returned St. Aulaire, one hand on the hilt of his silver dress sword, the other holding his chapeau de bras. He regarded Beaufort for an instant with a sour smile, and then turned and ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... able to coerce him," said the sour Desroches, "I should advise you to oppose his tastes; but weak as I see you are, you had better let him ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... thus nothing is more common than to hear comparisons with "Vulcan—Venus—Nicodemus," and the like; but in the present case, I am totally at a loss for any thing resembling the face of the worth Mrs. Healy, except it be, perhaps, that most ancient and sour visage we used to see upon old circular iron rappers formerly—they make none of them now—the only difference being, that Mrs. Healy's nose had no ring through it; I am almost tempted to ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... by which all excellence is attained and all success procured, is to follow genius; and have you not observed in all our conversations that my genius is always in extremes; that I am very noisy or very silent; very gloomy or very merry; very sour or very kind? And would you have me cross my genius when it leads me sometimes to voracity and sometimes to abstinence?' Piozzi Letters, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... 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 ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... is a little fleshy slip called Santorini's laughing-muscle. I would have it cut out of my face, if I were born with one of those constitutional grins upon it. Perhaps I am uncharitable in my judgment of those sour-looking people I told you of the other day, and of these smiling folks. It may be that they are born with these looks, as other people are with more generally recognized deformities. Both are bad enough, but I had rather meet three of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... No reflection on you, of course, but take yourself. You're smart, you're hard, and you got a good mind. You're one of the best spacemen in the deep. Take all that and turn it bad. Real bad. Sour it with too many years on a prison asteroid and you've got a fire-eating rocket buster as tough and as rough as God and ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell

... he levels at thy slumb'ring heart. The wound is posting; O be wise, beware! What, has the voice of danger lost the art To raise the spirit of neglected care? Well, sleep thy fill, and take thy soft reposes; But know, withal, sweet tastes have sour closes; And he repents in thorns that sleeps in beds of roses. —(Quarles' Emblems, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... gentleman no longer young, of a stiff and portly appearance, and a cautious and sour countenance. He began by stopping short in the doorway, staring about him with offensive and undisguised astonishment, as though asking himself what sort of place he had come to. Mistrustfully and with an ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... he said, and he bent a severe eye upon the Rural, Mr. Fripp, and the hotel-keeper's daughter—"I dunno but what we was gettin' a little sour-hearted, here in Brook Center. There has been some spites and a good many mean doin's and sayin's—namin' no names. What we didn't have was big feelin's. Everybody was nesty and nifty, and we all thought we know'd it all; but ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Worse by far than the affairs with the little Italian, or the fat Princess, eh, Bobby, my boy? Our heartfelt thanks to his Majesty, God bless him! and to Lady Morley-Frere, and to your dear self—our eternal love! Oh, Bobby, the thought of marrying that sour-visaged cousin of mine makes me ill, even now! And yet—at the time, before I told you—I felt myself slowly drifting into it. The ground seemed to be slipping from under my feet, as it were. I felt wholly lost—trapped, by Jove! She was very determined. We are here with the Ambassador ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... same grammar. They must be able to grasp other men's point of view, they must have a common world in which to work, and this demands that they mould the world in the same forms of thought. If one calls green what another calls sour, and one feels as noise what another feels as toothache, they cannot enter into a social group. Yet it is no less confusing and no less antisocial if the world which one sees as a system of causes and effects is to another a realm of capricious, causeless, zigzag happenings. The mental ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... into the nor'east, Horace, and see 'f ye can't stop out this 'ere wind. I'm e'eny most used up with it." So spake Sam Lawson, contemplating mournfully a new broad-brimmed straw hat in which my soul was rejoicing. It was the dripping end of a sour November afternoon, which closed up a "spell o' weather" that had been steadily driving wind and rain for a week past; and we boys sought the shelter and solace of his shop, and, opening the door, let in ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... bench and 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 ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan

... as they. That is simple, and the truth, and by far the jolliest and most inspiring ground to recruit on. It stirs the blood and stiffens the back as effectively and quickly as hypocrisy and cant and humbug sour and trouble and discourage. But it will not carry us farther than the end of the fight. We cannot go on fighting forever, or even for very long, whatever Lord Kitchener may think; and win, lose, or tie, the parties, when ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... with discarded blankets, tent flies, oilcloths and clothing, the men being forced to free themselves of all surplus incumbrances in order to keep up with the moving mass. At one place we passed General Early, sitting on his horse by the roadside, viewing the motley crowd as it passed by. He looked sour and haggard. You could see by the expression of his face the great weight upon his mind, his deep disappointment, his unspoken disappointment. What was yesterday a proud, well-disciplined army that had accomplished during the first part of the day all, or more, that even ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... places of worship, and Trinity Church (by H.H. Richardson), and the new Old South Church, are ambitious and beautiful pieces of ecclesiastical architecture. But the old Old South Meeting-House, the ecclesiastical centre of the city, is the flat and somewhat sour negation of all that is expressed or implied in an English cathedral. Let me not be understood to disparage the Old South or the spirit which fashioned it. In my eyes, minster and meeting-house are equally interesting historic monuments, ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... house. We always keep a good supply. One cup of butter, one of sugar, one of sour milk, half a nutmeg grated, one teaspoonful of saleratus dissolved in a little boiling water, flour enough to roll out the cookies. Cut into small round cakes and bake. Keep these in a close tin. They will last ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... 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

... sour and ill even than of yore, and there was still an unpleasant sensation in the lumbar regions of Master Busy's spine, whenever he sat down, which recalled a somewhat vigorous outburst of his ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... dancers and the fire, and took two smooth sour-wood sticks from Mack's coat-pocket. The old negro laughed and sang all the louder as he held his head to one side and Luke began to thrum the strings in time to ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben

... everywhere. He sat in a chair with a smooth-worn cane bottom so low that his chin was just above the table. The table-cover was of greasy oilcloth. His tumbler was cloudy, unclean, and the milk was thin and sour. Thick slices of fat bacon swam in a dish of grease, blood was perceptible in the joints of the freshly killed, half-cooked chicken, and the ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox

... utterance of a praiseworthy sentiment a man at once grows estimable, but we do mean that the sentiment according to its intrinsic value and worth has become an element in his make-up. We observe every day in the contrary direction that giving vent to continual complaint soon makes a person grow sour-minded: and incidentally it also makes him grow sour-visaged. It is frequently possible to tell a man's philosophy from his countenance. Those whose efforts are devoted to preaching a violent discontent seem to run to ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt

... Montpensier to his colony of monks, he desired at any rate to induce her to withdraw from the world, and counselled her to enter a Carmelite convent. Mademoiselle's ardent passion for M. de Lauzun seemed to the Trappist Abbe a scandal; in fact, his sour spirit could brook no scandal of any sort. "I attended her father as he lay dying," said he, "and to me belongs the task of training, enlightening, and sanctifying his daughter. I would have her keep silence; she has ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... you that you are perfectly in the wrong of it; for if it was a matter of importance, I know he has better sense than you; if a trifle, you know what I told you on your wedding day, that you were to be above little provocations." She knows very well I can be sour upon occasion, therefore gave me leave to ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele

... heartrending. She threw herself on her knees at the bedside and clung passionately to the sheets, while the room re-echoed with her piteous shrieks. But still Jeanne lay there with her face of stone, stiff and icy-cold, wrapped round by the silence of eternity. She seemed to be frowning; there was a sour pursing of the lips, eloquent of a revengeful nature; and it was this gloomy, pitiless look, springing from jealousy and transforming her face, which drove Helene so frantic. During the preceding thirty-six hours she had not failed to notice how the old ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... pulpit, behind the counter, in the office, and your children will need no specific ethical teaching; they will inhale right. And without these things all the ethical teaching in the world will only sour to cant at the first wind of the ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... national dish, taking the place of porridge to a Scotchman, and is nothing less than curded sheep's milk, like German 'dicke-milch,' eaten with sugar, to which cream is added as a luxury. As it was rather sour, we fought shy of it at first, fearing future consequences, but this was unnecessary. It is really excellent, and the natives eat it in large quantities. Huge barrels of this skyr are made during the time the sheep are in full milk, and stored away for ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... was abroad, and so we went outdoors for a fresh breath. The other woman came out just then to ask after Molly. She invited us into her cabin, and, oh, the little Mormons were everywhere; poor, half-clad little things! Some sour-dough biscuit and a can of condensed milk was everything they had to eat. The mother explained to us that their "men" had gone to get things for them, but had not come back, so she guessed they had ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... rugged, meagre, rust-stained, weather-worried face, Where care-filled creatures tug and delve to keep a worthless race; And glean, begrudgedly, by all their unremitting toil, Sour, scanty bread and fevered water from the ungrateful soil; Made harder by their gloom than flints that gash their harried hands, And harder in the things they call their hearts than wolfish bands, Perpetuating faults, inventing crimes for paltry ends, And yet, perversest beings! ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... probably never in any country incurred by a man of so kind and cordial a disposition. A weak mind would have sunk under such a load of unpopularity. But that resolute spirit seemed to derive new firmness from the public hatred. The only effect which reproaches appeared to produce on him, was to sour, in some degree, his naturally sweet temper. The last acts of his public life were marked, not only by that audacity which he had derived from nature, not only by that immorality which he had learned in the school of Walpole, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... so cold As the bright smile he sees me win, Nor the host's oldest wine so old As our poor gabble sour and thin. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... appreciate the blessing, they must have elementary knowledge, furst in religion, and then in the useful arts, before a college should be attempted, and so on, and then took up my hat and walked out. Well, they almost hissed me, and the sour virgins who bottled up all their humanity to pour out on the niggers, actilly pointed at me, and called me a Yankee Pussyite. I had some capital stories to excite 'em with, but I didn't think they were worth the powder and shot. It takes a great many ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... and subjective bubbling sensation on swallowing, sour odor to the breath, and cough, are the chief symptoms. With larger pouches, emaciation, pressure sensation in the neck and upper mediastinum, and the presence of a mass in the neck when the sac is filled, are present. Tracheal ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... Dell, kept watch over the luggage and encouraged the ostlers, with a fairly stoical countenance. He was an old traveller, and though he would have preferred not to travel in a deluge, he disliked Italy, as a country of sour wine, and would be glad to find himself across the Alps. Moreover, he knew the decision of his master's character, and, being a man of some ability and education, he took a pride in the loftiness of ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... rope round his neck; in 1400 two others were branded and otherwise severely punished; in 1435 "were the taverner Christian Corper and his wife put in a cask in which he sold false wine, and then exposed in the pillory. The punishment was adjudged because they had roasted pears and put them into new sour wine, in order to sweeten the wine. Some pears were hung round their necks like unto a Paternoster.'' In Biebrich on the Rhine, in 1482, a wine-falsifier was condemned to drink six quarts of his own wine; from this he died. In Frankfurt, casks in which false wine had been ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... them in some mawkish verse: My periods all are rough as nutmeg graters. The doggerel poet, wishing thee to read, Reject not; let him glean thy jests and stories. His brother I, of lowly sembling breed: Apollo grants to few Parnassian glories. Menac'd by critic with sour furrowed brow, Momus or Troilus or Scotch reviewer: Ruffle your heckle, grin and growl and vow: Ill-natured foes you thus will find the fewer, When foul-mouth'd senseless railers cry thee down, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... that he would sow wheat. He had but one ox. The others had died during the winter. So he set the thralls to help pull the plow. I saw their sour looks and was afraid, but Leif ...
— Viking Tales • Jennie Hall

... The beer was the very cheapest of small beer, and never kept good at sea, owing to the continual motion of the ship. It became acid, and induced dysentery in those who drank it, though it was sometimes possible to rebrew it after it had once gone sour. The water, which was carried in casks, was also far from wholesome. After storing, for a day or two, it generally became offensive, so that none could drink it. In a little while this offensiveness passed off, and it might ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... 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 of the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... Maltese living on a mere nothing. A little rancid oil, shark, or any other half-putrid fish, a few olives, sour wine, and bread, and they are well feasted. Hotel expenses are not higher than on the Riviera; but amongst the best resident classes living is rather expensive, especially in the matter of clothing, nearly every article of which is imported from England. In my days, ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... bread so black, and wine so sour, And a sou a-day to me, Made me long ten times an hour, For Susan ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... 184: Measures had been taken, in expectation, as it should appear, of these sieges. January 31, 1404, money is paid to the Prince to purchase sixty-six pipes of honey (to make mead), twelve casks of wine, four casks of sour wine, fifty casks of wheat-flour, and eighty quarters of salt, for victualling Caernarvon, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... drove, and was welcomed by a shrewish woman whose sour face was warmed for once in a way into ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... ever was pleased to see Come fawning and begging to ride on my knee: My wife, too, was pleased, and to the child said, Come, hold in your belly, and hold up your head: But now out of humour, I with a sour look, Cry, hussy, and give her a souse with my book; And I'll give her another; for why should she play, Since my Bacchus, and glasses, and friends, are away? Wine, what of thy delicate hue is become, That tinged our glasses ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... much. * * * When we arrived at King's Bridge I was put under the Provost Guard, with a man named Prichard and several other prisoners." They were kept at the guard house there for some time, and regaled with mouldy bread, rum and water, and sour apples, which were thrown down for them to scramble for, as if they were so many pigs. They were at last marched to New York. Just before reaching that city they were carried before a Hessian general to be "made a show of." The Hessians mocked them, told them they were all ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... were dark when Gunnar returned. Jack Odin sat by a single tiny light, and greeted his old friend in a glum and sour fashion. But Gunnar was in a ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... a fathers only daughter, Casting bread upon the water, In a way I hadent oter, I guess yes. Casting it like rain, Into the troubled main, Hoping this sour bread will ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis

... themselves with the tall swings, the merry-go-rounds, and the scowlike boats, to eat dulces at the booths, and to drink inordinate quantities of pulque at the many stands at which it is dispensed at popular prices. The pungent liquor permeates the surrounding atmosphere with its sour and offensive odor. Here one sees numerous groups busy at that besetting sin of the Indians, gambling. It is practiced on all occasions and in all places, the prevailing means being "the wheel of fortune." An itinerant bearing one of these instruments strapped about his shoulders stops here and there, ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... so much once, had contrived to carry you off from the place where you lived with her; so your father concluded to send you to your uncle's in Carolina, and said that I must go with you. And to tell you the truth, Miss, I was not displeased with it; for your father has grown so sour of late, that we have little peace ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... into "soft tack" and added another horror to the sailor's mess. The water he washed these varied abominations down with was frequently "stuff that beasts would cough at." His beer was no better. It would not keep, and was in consequence both "stinking and sour." [Footnote: According to Raleigh, old oil and fish casks were used for the storing of ship's beer in Elizabeth's reign.] Although the contractor was obliged to make oath that he had used both malt and hops in the brewing, it often consisted of nothing more stimulating than "water ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... the common belief, many persons bartered their souls to him {654} in return for supernatural gifts in this life. To compensate them for the loss of their salvation, these persons, the witches, were enabled to do acts of petty spite to their neighbors, turning milk sour, blighting crops, causing sickness to man and animals, making children cry themselves to death before baptism, rendering marriages barren, procuring abortion, and giving charms to blind a husband to his wife's adultery, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... arranging the shovel in the hot ashes, set her hoe-cake to bake. In the mean time the man had brought water from the brook, and as the woman swung the crane over the blaze, he filled the iron kettle hanging therefrom. There was some sour milk, and by a mysterious process she converted it into Dutch cheese. There was some butter and a few eggs, and she found a white cloth and spread the table with the few poor dishes, placing the geranium ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith

... said, "it's a big thing you have undertaken—not the getting of the money, but the beating of the river, and the raising of tall oats and orchards where only the sour swamp-grasses grew." She turned and for a moment looked into Nasmyth's eyes, as she added simply: "Good ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... an American bird, and has been described under various names by various authors. It is found in the lower parts of Pennsylvania, in the state of New York, and in New England, particularly in autumn, when the berries of the sour gum are ripe, on the kernels of which it eagerly feeds. As a singer it has few superiors. It frequently sings at night, and even all night, the notes being extremely clear and mellow. It does not acquire its full colors ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... dreary institution. But I have an impression that we must be in the wrong one, and buoy myself up with a devout belief in the other, over the way. The awakening to consciousness this morning on a lop-sided bedstead facing nowhere, in a room holding nothing but sour dust, was more terrible than the being afraid to go to bed last night. To keep ourselves up we played whist (double dummy) until neither of us could bear to speak to the other any more. We had previously supped on a tough old ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... FLY) AND MODERN POTATO BUG.—Symptoms: Sickening odor of the breath, sour taste, with burning heat in the throat, stomach, and bowels; frequent vomiting, often bloody; copious bloody stools, great pain in the stomach, with burning sensation in the bladder and difficulty to urinate, followed ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... they were gathered green, and carried home to be ripened in the cornmeal-barrel. The boys usually forgot about them before they were ripe; when now and then one was remembered, it was a thin, watery, sour thing at the best. But the boys gathered them every spring, in the pleasant open woods where they grew, just beyond the densest shade of the trees, among the tall, straggling grasses; and they had that joyous sense of the bounty of nature in hoarding them up which is one of the sweetest ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... pair had a crook in their lot. Childlessness was then an especial sorrow, and many a prayer had gone up from both that their solitary home might be gladdened by children's patter and prattle. But their disappointed hope had not made them sour, nor turned their hearts from God. If they prayed about it, they would not murmur at it, and they were not thereby hindered from 'walking in all God's commandments and ordinances blameless.' Let us learn that unfulfilled wishes are not to clog our devotion, nor to silence our prayers, nor ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... sometimes bring queer gifts. One ballad represents them as being Lithuanians, and only two in number, who bring Christ offerings of botvinya—a savory and popular dish, in the form of a soup served cold, with ice, and composed of small beer brewed from sour, black, rye bread, slightly thickened with strained spinach, in which float cubes of fresh cucumber, the green tops of young onions, cold boiled fish, horseradish, bacon, sugar, shrimps, any cold vegetables on hand, ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... Miss Eliza Andrews," said Anne. "But then think of living all your life with a name like Atossa! Wouldn't it sour almost any one? She should have tried to imagine her name was Cordelia. It might have helped her a great deal. It certainly helped me in the days when ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... is either dirty or unsweet. Complaints have reached her that the beds were—well, inhabited—but no servant now dares to hint at anything wrong in this particular. If this traveller or that says a word to her personally in complaint, she looks as sour as death, and declines to open her mouth in reply; but when that traveller's back is turned, the things that Madame Faragon can say about the upstart coxcombry of the wretch, and as to the want of all real comforts which she is sure prevails in the home quarters of ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope

... a sour smile on his own lips. He could understand if they got confused. His own law about the women had been like steel, and ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson

... pursuits. Their motive, for all this, we need not pause, in this place, to examine. But a distinction may be made between the melancholy of the heart, and the melancholy of the mind: while the latter is sceptical, sour, and misanthropic, the former is passionate, tender, and religious. Those who are under the influence of the one, become inactive, morose, or heedless: detecting the follies of the wisest and the frailties ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... great fury seized on the boy. It was one of those angers that for a while poison the air and turn all things sour; yet without obscuring the mind—an anger in which the angry one strikes first at that which he loves most, because he loves it most, knowing, too, that the words he speaks are false. For this, for the present, was the breaking-point in the lad. He had suffered ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... orphans, and had done his work in the firm of Cropper and Burgess after the old-fashioned safe manner, which leads neither to riches nor to ruin. Therefore he was respected. But he was a discontented, sour old man, who believed himself to have been injured by all his own friends, who disliked his own partners because they had bought that which had, at any rate, never belonged to him;—and whose strongest passion it was to hate ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... father," said he; but Gudrid said, "I shall go if you do." Thorstan's face fell, and Eric Red burst into a great shout of laughter. "Oh, sour face," he cried out, "let us hear what you have ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett

... promises of advantages to come which induced Athens to make the infamous Peace, and quotes the famous remark whereby the traitor gang raised a laugh while in the act of selling their country. "Demosthenes is naturally a sour and peevish fellow, for he drinks water." Drawing their attention to this origin of all their trouble, he asks them to remember their names—at the same time remarking that even if a man deserved to die, punishment should ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... is to look sour and frown if anybody gets too familiar with me. You can do that, ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... but still enough to recognise fine dancing when I saw it; her brother was a partner worthy of her. I have seldom had more pure pleasure in playing dance music, and I should have been willing it had lasted all day; but it was not long before a sour-faced maid came and said my Lady had sent her to say mademoiselle should be at her studies; and she ran away laughing, yet sorry to go, and dropped a little running curtsey at the door, very graceful, such as I have ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... a sad thing when a man looks sweet and a maid looks sour, but there is a worse thing; that is when the maid feels ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, which the vulgate renders bitter of soul; and doubtless,' he said, 'they will prove mighty men of their hands, and there is much need that they should, for I have seen many a sour ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... fields through which the river ran were useless to the farmer. Are there not some whom we know who might be thus described—perhaps someone who reads these lines among the number? First the schoolboy, then the youth, and now the man, profitless and sour, so that all cultivation has ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness

... mellow hour: Fill your pipe, and taste the wine— Warp your face, if it be sour, I can spare a smile from mine; If it sharpen up your wit, Let me feel the edge of it— I have eager ears to lend, Tom ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... sour little fellow, and after his hunting accident he had only one eye, but when it looked out from under his cocked hat there was not much upon a field of battle which escaped it. He could stand in front of a ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... not be imagined that the scene of Alma Tadema's 'Roman Vintage,' or what we fondly picture to our fancy of the Athenian Lenaea, is repeated in the streets of Crema. This modern treading of the wine-press is a very prosaic affair. The town reeks with a sour smell of old casks and crushed grape-skins, and the men and women at work bear no resemblance whatever to Bacchus and his crew. Yet even as it is, the Lombard vintage, beneath floods of sunlight and a pure blue sky, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... Agnes, as the members, trying not to pull sour faces, consoled themselves with candy and broke up the meeting. "Any one who can think of a stunt for next time please bring along propositions. We're always open to new ideas and ready ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... Sarah thin, I'd have you to know she's not. Her arms are beautiful and round, and so is she, and it's the grapes that are sour, Mrs. ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin

... the quality of lightness. It is an abstract term that describes an attribute, but feathers are things and therefore concrete. Hence the pair of words illustrate Inclusion by Abstract and Concrete, and is indicated by In. by A. and C., or merely by In. Other examples: "Sour, Vinegar;" "Sweet, Sugar;" "Coward, ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)

... personal. But observe how basely she treated her relatives, those poor girls, the Greys, Catharine and Mary, sisters of poor Lady Jane, whose fair and clever head Mary I. had taken off. The barren Queen, too jealous to share her power with a husband, hated marriage with all "the sour malevolence of antiquated virginity," and was down upon the Lady Catharine and the Lady Mary because they chose to become wives. Then she imprisoned her cousin, Mary Stuart, for nineteen years, and finally had her butchered under an approach to the forms ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... older daughter, was not blind to his plan. She was in a sour temper because the miserly Jonas, who came from London often now to see them, had begun to make love to Mercy instead of to her. To see her father now paying so much attention to Mary Graham made Charity angry, and she left her father's house and went ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... chaste Matilda's ears With lawless suits, as he hath often done, Or offers to the altars of her eyes Lascivious poems, stuff'd with vanities, He craves to see but short and sour days: His death be like to Robin's he desires; His perjured body prove a poison'd prey For cowled monks ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... in the background while Mrs. Denton was speaking, but now she approached the settle. Mrs. Denton threw a sour look at her, and flounced out of her way. Helbeck silently made room for her. As she passed him, she felt instinctively that his distant politeness had become something more pronounced. He left her questions to Augustina to answer, and himself ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Thompson was sour, but he admired nerve. The fact of the Englishman staying alone aboard his wrecked ship appealed to him where ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains

... on the road for ten years a real Sunday dinner in a real home has got Sherry's flossiest efforts looking like a picnic collation with ants in the pie. You're coming with me, more for my sake than for yours, because the thought of you sitting here, like this, would sour the day ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... is that a tree must produce its fruit—that a crab-tree will bring forth crab apples, and that a man of meagre and acid mind, who writes a pamphlet or makes a speech, must make a meagre and acid pamphlet or a poor and sour speech. Let things, then, ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... with a sour look, "It's like liquorice syrup." And his wife, "in order to get rid of the taste," asked for a glass ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... fellow jumped into the car and sped away and Miss Upton plodded slowly up to her door whose bell pealed sharply as it was pulled open by an unseen hand, and a colorless, sour-visaged woman appeared in the entrance. Her hay-colored hair was strained back and wound in a tight, small knot, her forehead wore a chronic scowl, and her one-sided ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham

... Rega sent a present of twelve elephants' tusks, forty-one loads of tullaboon, twelve pots of sour plantain cider, and thirty-four cows. At the same time, he complained that some of Abou Saood's people were taking slaves in the neighbourhood ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... to be affected unpleasantly by the mere thought of them. Whereas, if a person partakes of such food without knowledge of it, no ill effects may ensue. The sense of taste is affected by the imagination. A man sent the cream from the breakfast-table because it tasted sour, but found it sweet when it was brought back by a servant, supposing it to be a fresh supply. A laxative medicine may produce sleep, in the belief that it is an opiate; and contrariwise, an anodyne may act as a ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... Normandy, then on the banks of the Seine along which he coasted, bending to the oar. Then Brittany with its beaches, where high waves rolled in beneath low and dreary skies, then Auvergne, with its scattered huts amid the sour grass, beneath rocks of basalt; and, finally, Corsica, Italy, Sicily, not with artistic enthusiasm, but simply to enjoy the delight of grand, pure outlines. Africa, the country of Salammbo, the desert, finally call him, and he breathes ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... unconventional travel, a pilgrim's scrip with a few bits of blue-sky philosophy in it. There is, so far as I know, very little useful information and absolutely no criticism of the universe to be found in this volume. So if you are what Izaak Walton calls "a severe, sour-complexioned man," you would better carry it back to the bookseller, and get your money again, if he will give it to you, and go your way rejoicing ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... of cornmeal, One-half cup of barley flour, One-half cup of rice flour, One teaspoon of salt, One-half cup of molasses, One level teaspoon of soda, One and one-quarter cups of sour milk. ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson

... in the point of religion, in respect of which we look on former times, as the times of ignorance and darkness, which God winked at. If it were so indeed, I should think the time happy, and bless the days we live in, for as many sour and sad accidents as they are mixed withal. Indeed, if the variety of books, and multiplicity of discourses upon religion, if the multitude of disputes about points of truth, and frequency of sermons, might be held for a sufficient proof of this pretension, we should not ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... warm water, and left on the warm hearth all night. If the yeast is fresh, a small quantity will do; if several weeks old, it will take more. If you use dry yeast, let it soak fifteen minutes, and put in a tea-spoonful of salaeratus to prevent it from getting sour. ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea

... the Difference between a Rickey and a Sour and was trying to pretend to let on to be fond of the Smoky Taste in that Imported Article which has done so much to ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade

... to come aboard, and in the meantime to send us such victuals as were necessary for our provision. So that the same night we received of them meal, which they call sagu, made of the tops of certain trees, tasting in the mouth like sour curds, but melteth like sugar, whereof they make certain cakes, which may be kept the space of ten years, and yet then good to be eaten. We had of them store of rice, hens, unperfect and liquid sugar, sugar-canes, and a fruit which they call figo ...
— Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World • Francis Pretty

... well set forth by Mansie Wauch. Yet sometimes, when such a vivid view comes, it remains for days, and is a painful companion of your solitude. Don't you remember, clerical reader of thirty-two, having seen a good deal of an old parson, rather sour in aspect, rather shabby-looking, sadly pinched for means, and with powers dwarfed by the sore struggle with the world to maintain his family and to keep up a respectable appearance upon his limited resources; perhaps with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... greater danger of misleading. Certainly there were those among the Separatists from the Church of England who, in the violence of their alienation and the bitterness of their sufferings, did not refrain from sour and acrid censoriousness toward the men who were nearest them in religious conviction and pursuing like ends by another course. One does not read far in the history of New England without encountering reformers of this extreme type. But not such were the company of true worshipers who, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... and sour and unconquered, but not as a conqueror. They all were dirty and shabby and hungry. With Sitting Bull there rode on ponies his old father, Four Horns, and his elder children. In a wagon piled high with camp goods rode his two wives, one of whom ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin

... wooden boxes, ornamented with sentences painted in Icelandic. I really had no idea that we should be made so comfortable. There was one objection to the house, and that was, the very powerful odor of dried fish, of macerated meat, and of sour milk, which three fragrances combined did not at ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... a sight worth seeing after the ugly sour faces one meets in town these days!" he added, gleefully rubbing his beringed hands one against ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... calm, unselfish, and 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 ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh

... to one of the nearest huts, and Kirby, following her, found lying on the uneven earth floor within, a half-skinned animal which resembled a small antelope. An obsidion knife beside the carcass, the disordered condition of a couch of grass, the sour odor of recent animal occupancy, all told ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... brook, travellers morose or bland, farmers full of a sturdy sense that made their chat as wholesome as the mould they delved in; school children barefooted and blithe, and specimens of womankind, from the buxom housewife who took them under her motherly wing at once, to the sour, snuffy, shoe-binding spinster with "No Admittance" ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... over to the general store, and there she met her first rebuff. Thompson, the proprietor, was a sour-visaged man, tall and lanky and evidently a dyspeptic. Having been beaten by Hopkins at the last election, when he ran against him on the Republican ticket, Thompson had no desire to see Forbes more successful than he had been himself. And there were ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne

... marks th' inimy iv thrusts is not to me taste. Lave us be merry about it an' jovial an' affectionate. Lave us laugh an' sing th' octopus out iv existence. Betther blue but smilin' lips anny time thin a full coal scuttle an' a sour heart. As Hogan says, a happy peasanthry is th' hope iv th' state. So lave us warble ti-lire-a-lay—' Jus' thin Euclid Aristophanes Madden on th' quarther deck iv th' throlley car give a twisht to his brake an' th' chief ixicutive iv th' nation wint up in th' air with th' song ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne

... Women's Rights Convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York, July 19-20, 1848. It was organised by divorced wives, childless women, and sour old maids, the gallant newspapers declared; that is, by Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mrs. Lucretia Mott, Mrs. McClintock, and other fearless women, who not only lived the purest and most unselfish of domestic ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... more or less game picked up by the way. A bowl of mead or skhone is generally to be had by the Circassian, let the supper it accompanies be never so scanty; and the sharp appetite which heaven sends to those journeying through the hills in the saddle, will season even a little sour milk and a few cakes of millet and honey, if there be nothing else, with more than the savor of a feast. The chieftain fares no better than his clansmen; all share in ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie

... fire 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... else? Oh! wirra, wirra! to hear that me poor gintleman was gone to the cowld gaol, where he is lying on the stone flure, and nothing but the black bread and the sour wather." ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... and exhaustion, that I cannot eat. On the day following, the order is again changed. So it goes on. The difference in food, too, is often as great. At some houses, everything is of good quality, well cooked, and in consequence, of easy digestion; while at others, sour or heavy bread, greasy cooking, and like kitchen abominations, if I must so call them, disorder instead of giving sustenance to a frail body like mine. The seamstress who should attempt a change of these things ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur



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