Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Soured   /sˈaʊərd/   Listen
Soured

adjective
1.
Having turned bad.



Related search:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Soured" Quotes from Famous Books



... one, to avoid or get rid of some great calamity; the other, to obtain some great and positive good; and the two may be distinguished by the names of active and passive revolutions. In those which proceed from the former cause, the temper becomes incensed and soured; and the redress, obtained by danger, is too often sullied by revenge. But in those which proceed from the latter, the heart, rather animated than agitated, enters serenely upon the subject. Reason and discussion, persuasion and conviction, become ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... different proposition. Cuba was being coerced by an European power and, of course, we had to stop it. Mexico is in the hands of her own people and if you give them time they may make something of her. Then, there's the oil question. That's sort of soured the native population on us. You'd never persuade a live Mexican that the U. S. came over here for anything in the world but to grab the oil lands—whether the U. S. was ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall

... reasons present themselves, the first being that men so passionately love change, that, commonly speaking, those who are well off are as eager for it as those who are badly off: for as already has been said with truth, men are pampered by prosperity, soured by adversity. This love of change, therefore, makes them open the door to any one who puts himself at the head of new movements in their country, and if he be a foreigner they adopt his cause, if a fellow-countryman ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... besides Cecile and Ernestine, were Mademoiselle Berton, daughter of the tax-collector,—an insignificant young person who played the part of satellite to Cecile,—and Mademoiselle Herbelot, sister of the second notary of Arcis, an old maid of thirty, soured, affected, and dressed like all old maids; for she wore, over a bombazine gown, an embroidered fichu, the corners of which, gathered to the front of the bodice, were knotted together after the well-known fashion under ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... for Henry's being soured. He was not of the nature to be filial with Dr. May; and therefore gratitude oppressed, and patronage embittered him. The first months of warm feeling at an end, the old spirit of independence revived, and he avoided consulting ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... liking begotten, it might be, of the ingenuously unconscious manner in which the latter looked up to him, in fact, made a sort of elder brother of him. Holmes was no stronger-headed than most youngsters of his temperament and circumstances, and Laurence did not want to see him—soured and dejected by disappointment all round—throw himself in with the reckless, indiscriminate bar-frequenter, of whom there were not lacking woeful examples in those days, though, poor fellows, much from the same motive, to drown care; and into ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... by-and-by he found it. Goodson, years and years ago, came near marrying a very sweet and pretty girl, named Nancy Hewitt, but in some way or other the match had been broken off; the girl died, Goodson remained a bachelor, and by-and-by became a soured one and a frank despiser of the human species. Soon after the girl's death the village found out, or thought it had found out, that she carried a spoonful of negro blood in her veins. Richards worked at these details a good while, and in the end he thought he remembered things concerning ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... contrived to help this poor castaway with the veriest scrapings of a miserly household. The old man, soured by his great disappointment, grew sordid and covetous with increasing years, and the lives of the women were hard and hopeless. By little cheats, and petty contrivances, and pitiful falsifications of financial statements, they managed to scrape together a few louis ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... the heroic girl, pale, her features drawn, her veil aside, her whip in her hand, standing on the threshold of the door, whence her burning glance grasped the whole scene and comprehended it, each knew from the almost imperceptible motion which crossed the soured and bittered face of Corentin, that the real adversaries had met. A terrible duel was ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... a month too late. One month, and our lily-white Bourbon king Has done a colossal thing; He has curdled love, And soured the desires of a people. Still the letters fall, The workmen creep up and down their ladders like lizards on a wall. Tap! Tap! Tink! Clink! Clink! "Oh, merciful God, they will not touch Austerlitz! Strike me blind, my God, my eyes can never look on that. I would give the other leg to save ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... in the justified consciousness of your greater efficiency and more strenuous effort, allowed the fact of the great inherited advantages possessed by others to become a thorn in the flesh, and an ever-rankling bitter grievance, which dimmed your contentment and soured ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn

... trousers, a flabby cravat, or a crumpled shirt collar. There was a touch of the magistrate in the man, a good deal more of the Councillor of the Prefecture, all the self-importance of the mayor of the arrondissement, the local autocrat, and the soured temper of the unsuccessful candidate who has never been returned since the year 1816. As to countenance—a wizened, wrinkled, sunburned face, and long, sleek locks of scanty gray hair; as to character—an incredible mixture of homely sense and sheer silliness; of a rich ...
— The Message • Honore de Balzac

... under the drooping foliage of a century-old ash, an island fringed with irises, rose-bushes, and flowers which appears like an emerald richly set. Ah! one might rove a thousand leagues for such a place! The most sickly, the most soured, the most disgusted of our men of genius in ill health would die of satiety at the end of fifteen days, overwhelmed with the luscious sweetness of fresh ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... the misfortunes of the Belle had soured, "what's there in that? It's mighty easy to do the philanthropist act when you're next ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... singularly uneager for fame. I'm only talking from what I've seen occasionally. That's been warning enough for me. It must sour a man to be jeered at in that sort of way, and, thanks, I prefer not to be soured. ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... too jumpy and nervy a person to fit my ideal of a paternal landlord, and what is, after all, more important, I feel convinced that his tenants and stable-lads would have thought the same. Secondly, I refuse to believe that a spinster, however soured, however much devoted to the cause of Labour and misguided crusades for social purity, would have behaved as Miss Baker does in this book; and deliberately attempted to father a false scandal on Sir Robert merely because she hated his type. And if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various

... the severe work of academic official life has had added the yet more severe mental strain which bearing up against a cruel social ostracism puts on any man; and knowing that he has done this without getting soured, or losing courage for a day—any one, I say, who knows all this would be inclined to say that the young man deserved to be well taken care of by the government he is bound to serve. Everybody here who has watched his course speaks ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... of their friends: However, so it is in town and country, in every parish and street; the pastor is divided from his flock, the father from his son, and the house often divided against itself. Men's very natures are soured, and their passions inflamed, when they meet in party clubs, and spend their time in nothing else but railing at the opposite side; thus every man alive among us is encompassed with a million of enemies ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... Sedley fancies that she is growing insolent and ungrateful, and, as the guilty thief who fears each bush an officer, sees threatening innuendoes and hints of capture in all the girl's speeches and answers. Miss Clapp, grown quite a young woman now, is declared by the soured old lady to be an unbearable and impudent little minx. Why Amelia can be so fond of her, or have her in her room so much, or walk out with her so constantly, Mrs. Sedley cannot conceive. The bitterness of poverty has poisoned the life of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... length succeeded in getting on board the Anaconda. Commander Allport, who was standing on deck, received Adair with a supercilious air. He had been many years a lieutenant, and his temper had been considerably soured before he had got his promotion; indeed, some of those whom he had known as midshipmen were now admirals, and he seemed to take especial pleasure in acting in a dictatorial manner towards all those ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... have absorbed quantities of lactic microbes by consuming in the uncooked condition substances such as soured milk, kephir, sauerkraut, or salted cucumbers, which have undergone lactic fermentation. By these means they have unknowingly lessened the evil consequences of intestinal putrefaction. The fact that so many races make soured milk and use it copiously is an excellent testimony to its usefulness, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... under the charge of Mr. Asaph Perley, or, as was reported by others, on account of an imminent subscription for a new bell, he thenceforth, absented himself from all outward and visible communion. Yet he seems to have preserved, (alta mente repostum,) as it were, in the pickle of a mind soured by prejudice, a lasting scunner, as he would call it, against our staid and decent form of worship: for I would rather in that wise interpret his fling, than suppose that any chance tares sown by my pulpit discourses should survive so long, while ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... prevent the disgrace of being condemned by the church. How needful then is it, that men of peaceable dispositions, and not of froward and fractious and dividing spirits, be chosen to rule the church of God, for fear lest the whole church be leavened and soured by them! ...
— An Exhortation to Peace and Unity • Attributed (incorrectly) to John Bunyan

... not originally bestowed upon her much sweetness of temper, and her frequent disappointments, each of which she termed being crossed in love, had completely soured it. Every pretty woman was the object of her envy, I might almost say every married woman. She despised all that were not as rich as herself, and hated every one who was superior or equal to her in fortune. Tormented inwardly with her own ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott

... young law-student, with shallow purse and aristocratic connections; Bianchon, the future great-gun in medicine, at present walking the hospitals and attending lectures and practising dissections; Victorine Taillefer, the rejected daughter of a guilty millionaire; Mademoiselle Michonneau, the soured spinster, who ferrets out the identity of her fellow-boarder Vautrin, and betrays to justice this cynical outlaw installed so quietly, and, to all appearance, safely, in the pension, where Madame Vauquer, the traipsing widow, lords it serenely, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... they had any thing to give they passed him over. He had a temper of his own, if the truth must be told; and with nothing against him—on the contrary, with every thing in his favor—he didn't make friends. A soured man. At home and abroad, a ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... life were therefore consecrated to an endeavour to dethrone the idol which his own hands had set up. Voltaire traded on the patriotic prejudices of his hearers, but his efforts to depreciate Shakespeare were very partially successful. Few writers of power were ready to second the soured critic, and after Voltaire's death the Shakespeare cult in France, of which he was the unwilling ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... footing of intimacy with a greater number of distinguished persons than they really are, is the great and laborious pursuit of four families out of five, the members of which are exempted from the necessity of daily industry. In this pursuit, their time, spirits, and talents are wasted; their tempers soured; their affections palsied; and their natural manners and dispositions altogether sophisticated ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... lees, collects the sediment with a pigeon's egg: because the yelk sinks to the bottom, rolling down with it all the heterogeneous parts. You may rouse the jaded toper with roasted shrimps and African cockles; for lettuce after wine floats upon the soured stomach: by ham preferably, and by sausages, it craves to be restored to its appetite: nay, it will prefer every thing which is brought smoking hot from the nasty eating-houses. It is worth while to ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... Master label him with this ugly name? It was not because he had a prejudice against him. Jesus was no soured misanthrope. He was no snarling cynic. He did not resent a man just because he had made a success. He was not an I. W. W. growling over real or fancied wrongs. No, the reason that Jesus called him a fool is because no other name ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... thus sold themselves to the highest bidder, or the minister who boasted of having bought them, as if their acquisition were a glorious conquest. Judging that the Emperor had spoken to me of the scene I have described above, Fouche said to me, 'The Emperor's temper is soured by the resistance he finds, and he thinks it is my fault. He does not know that I have no power but by public opinion. To morrow I might hang before my door twenty persons obnoxious to public opinion, though I should not be able to imprison for four-and-twenty hours any individual ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... constituted himself her teacher, guide, and protector. And she had joyously accepted him. His soured and rebellious nature had been no barrier to her great love, which had twined about his heart like ivy around a crumbling tower. And his love for the child had swelled like a torrent, fed hourly by countless ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... or chimneys refused to draw, or the bread soured over night, a pessimistic public, turning for relief to the local drama, said that Amelia Titcomb had married a tramp. But as soon as the heavens smiled again, it was conceded that she must have been getting lonely in her middle age, and ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... that they all joined in this kindly congratulation to their young friend. But no. There was one spirit there whom envy had soured, one whom the happiness of another had made miserable, one whose heart beat in no unison with these jocund sounds. As Macassar's joy was at its height, in the proud moment of his triumph, a hated voice struck his ears, and filled his soul with ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... paused, steadying his voice which faltered again.—"I only want, since it seems I've got to go on living, to slink away somewhere out of sight, and hide myself and my wretchedness and shame from every one I know.—Can you bear with me, soured and invalided as I am, mother? Can you put up with my temper, and my silence, and my grumbling, useless log as I ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... which breeds good if patience thou can learn; * Be calm soured, scaping anguish-draughts that gripe and bren: Know, that if patience with good grace thou dare refuse, * With ill-graced patience thou shalt bear ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... the situation in which he found himself placed, by his father's refusal to support him or to allow him to take any action. This had soured his temper, and he had taken to drinking heavily. He had become more harsh with his men, more severe in the punishment inflicted for any trifling disobedience of orders. Although no thought that the rule of the Khalifa could be seriously threatened entered their minds, fanatical as they were, they ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty

... after a little observation, to give him credit for being so genuinely and unaffectedly ill-natured or ill-bred as he wished to appear. His temper might perhaps be a little soured by finding, like many others of his sex, that through some unaccountable bias in favour of beauty, he was the husband of a very silly woman,—but she knew that this kind of blunder was too common for any sensible man to be lastingly hurt by it. It was rather a wish of distinction, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... surplus moisture, had been choked in the operations of the seed-time, and not cleared out again; and that consequently when rain fell heavily, it accumulated on the lower ground; and having soaked and soured it for several days, had killed the germinating seed beneath the ground. You go to the farmer and ask why he had allowed a large portion of his crop to be lost. Suppose he should say, My work was done, as ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... has soured you with suspicions? Upon my word, here is a man sitting with me who bears your name, but few of those good qualities the name is linked with in my memories. Your King saw Mlle. de Caprara once in Rome, ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... aunts, they were as tall and thin as a couple of willow-rods, pale, discreet, ultra-aristocratic in their reserve and their coldness; but they bore in their faces an expression of happy peace and sentimental tenderness, such as is often seen in old maids whose temper has not been soured by celibacy. They dressed absolutely alike, as they had done now for forty years, preferring neutral colors and modest fashions, such ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... and temper, but it was no more. To take her name as standing for a fair setting forth of her character would be highly injurious to a really respectable composition, which the world's neglect (there was no other imaginable cause) had soured a little. ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... re-established in his several necessities and comforts, Newton, aware that his purse would not last for ever, applied to the owner of the brig for employment; but he was decidedly refused. The loss of the vessel had soured his temper against anyone who had belonged to her. He replied that he considered Newton to be an unlucky person, and must decline his sailing in any of his vessels, even if ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... take himself and his belongings back to Nancy, to his little room in the Rue Stanislaus, where, at any rate, he could read, meditate, or make plans for the future without being every moment tormented by miserable, petty annoyances. His temper was becoming soured, his nerves were unstrung, and his mind was so disturbed that he fancied he had none but enemies around him. A cloudy melancholy seemed to invade his brain; he was seized with a sudden fear that he was about to have an attack of persecution-phobia, and began to feel his pulse and interrogate ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... you get to be a man; you will find helpers, and carry it on as I wanted to do." He had made no audible answer, but he had told himself sturdily again and again that he certainly would. Yet here he was, barely of age, and almost soured by disappointments. Certain well-meant attempts having proved failures, and having not found the helpers whom he had eagerly expected, the magnitude of the work impressed itself upon him more remorselessly each hour. Yet now he seemed to feel again the thrill in his veins, ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden

... at night. Of course this benighted person was not aware that by so doing she secured quiet chats with "C," uninterrupted, and without being told in the middle of some pretty speech to "Shut up!" or to " Keep out!" by some soured and inelegant operator on the line, to whom the romance of telegraphy had long ago given place to the ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer

... the berth, "Old Rhymer" as he was called, who was soured by disappointment at not obtaining his commission, as he thought he ought to have done long ago, took every opportunity of finding fault with him, and was continually sneering at what he said when at the mess table. If he attempted to reply, O'Connor, the eldest of the midshipmen, ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston

... and character had a most disastrous effect upon the young man. He was soured, because disappointed in his most cherished purpose at an age when most youths scarcely have definite plans. Many have a strong natural bent, and if turned aside from this, they are more or less unhappy, and their duties, instead of ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... a time upon the sudden rupture with Argile to pay very much heed to my defence of Master Gordon. The quarrel—to call that a quarrel in which one man had all the bad temper and the other nothing but self-reproach—had soured him of a sudden as thunder turns the morning's cream to curd before noon. And his whole demeanour revealed a totally new man. In his ordinary John was very pernicketty about his clothing, always with the ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... self-supportless leaning for all pleasure on another's breast.' If a man desires not to go mad or not to be soured into oil of vitriol, let him watch the doors of his heart; let him never solicit any expression ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... very far though we were out for nearly two hours. The streets were filled with armed men and everybody we met challenged us. The police were the hardest to get rid of. They were no doubt soured by the treatment they received in Belfast. Accustomed to be regarded with awe by rural malefactors and denounced in flaming periods, of a kind highly gratifying to their self-importance, by political leaders, they could not understand a people who did not mention them in speeches ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... the world and back again!" But then Dyck nodded kindly. It was as if suddenly the martyr spirit had lifted him out of rigid, painful isolation, and he was speaking from a hilltop. "No, my friends, what is in my mind now is that I'm hungry. For four years I've eaten the bread of prison, and it's soured my mouth and galled my belly. Go you to that inn and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... most I compliment, with thanks profuse, The touch that gives your feasts their crowning savour, Whose absence must have marred the duckling mousse, Ruined the neige au Kirsch, and soured the flavour Of Madame MELBA'S peaches— I mean the pledge ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various

... this he does, not in the hard temper of a Balzac, not with the calm or pride of a Goethe, but with an overflowing fulness of spontaneous and uncontrollable sympathy. He is a sentimentalist in the rationalistic century, not with the sentimentalism of misanthropy, such as fired or soured Rousseau, but social, large-hearted, many-sided, careless of the wise rigours of morality. He is never callous nor neutral; on the contrary, he is always approving or disapproving, but not from the standards of the ethical text-books. The casuistry of feeling is of everlasting ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... There is a quality in events which is apprehended differently by different minds or even by the same mind at different times. Any man living at all consciously knows that embarrassing truth. Heyst was aware that this visit could bode nothing pleasant. In his present soured temper towards all mankind he looked upon it as a visitation of a particularly ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... as dangerous; they certainly account why the unhappy cut the thread of life, in a manner not corresponding with the received prejudices; but, nevertheless, it is a temperament soured by chagrin, a bilious constitution, a melancholy habit, a defect in the organization, a derangement in the mind; it is in fact necessity and not reasonable speculations, that breed in man the design of destroying himself. Nothing invites him to this step so long as reason remains with him; ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... with county money, and the like—by which his fellow-politicians who held office in the early years of the county had founded their fortunes. A very respectable, honest, American tory was the colonel, fond of his political sway, and rather soured by the fact that it was passing from him. He had now broken with Cummins and Dolliver as he had done years ago with Weaver and later with Larrabee—and this breach was very important to him, whether they were greatly concerned about it ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick

... him my hand, of course, because I could not help it; but the sympathy I had been prepared to feel for Clara's father was immediately soured by his appearance, and the wheedling, unreal ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... meal. That first bite must have been a big one. Its taste is still in the mouth of the race. If that fruit were an apple it must have been a crab. There has been a bad case of indigestion ever since. If you think there were no crab-apples in Eden, then the touch of those thickening lips must have soured it in the eating—man's teeth are still on edge. The fruit became tough in the chewing. It's not digested yet. That Garden of Eden must have been on a hill, with lowlands below, and high hills above, and roads both ways. The man seems to have gotten into the lowland road, and after a bit, ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon

... Or, if we stop short of that blessed consummation, heaven was heaven still, as Milton sings, after Lucifer and a third part of the angels had seceded from its golden palaces,—and perhaps all the more heavenly, because so many gloomy brows, and soured, vindictive hearts, had gone to plot ineffectual schemes of mischief elsewhere. [Footnote: We regret the innuendo in the concluding sentence. The war can never be allowed to terminate, except in the complete triumph of Northern principles. We hold the event in our own hands, and may choose whether ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... of the jury, I am surprised. Nothing could be more unexpected than the charge Dialogue has brought against me. When I first took him in hand, he was regarded by the world at large as one whose interminable discussions had soured his temper and exhausted his vitality. His labours entitled him to respect, but he had none of the attractive qualities that could secure him popularity. My first step was to accustom him to walk upon the common ground like the rest of mankind; my next, to make him ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... be attended to when the milk has soured just enough to have a little of it curdle on the bottom of the pan. If it should nearly all curdle, it would not be a serious injury, unless it should become old. If you have not conveniences for keeping milk sufficiently warm in cold weather, place it over the stove at once, when ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... ever-wakeful pride that seemed to torment these poor wretches. In many of them it was so excessive, that all feeling of displeasure, or even of ridicule, was lost in pity. One of these was a pretty girl, whose natural disposition must have been gentle and kind; but her good feelings were soured, and her gentleness turned into morbid sensitiveness, by having heard a thousand and a thousand times that she was as good as any other lady, that all men were equal, and women too, and that it was a sin and a shame for a free-born American to be treated like a servant. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various

... himself—his precious self—and yet he is in "Society," and reckoned as rather an authority too! These are only types, but, if you run through them all, you must discover that only the sweet and splendid girls who have not had time to be spoilt and soured are worth thinking about. If there is dancing, it is of course carried out with perfect grace and composure; if there is merely an assembly, every one looks as well as possible, and every one stares at every one else with an air as indifferent as possible. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... time exhibited sensibility, and had even, while suffering from the effects of a heartache, written to Beranger for his advice. But under the ravages of life's storms, her spirit had become soured, for she had been forced, in turn, to give lessons on the piano, to act as manageress of a table d'hote, to assist others in writing for the fashion journals, to sublet apartments, and to traffic in lace in the world of light women, her relations with whom ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... whom he loved with an exquisite tenderness. Granting that he would not have had much chance of winning tangible rewards by the baseness of a desertion, he at least recognised his true position; and instead of being soured by his exclusion from the general competition, or wasting his life in frivolous regrets, he preserved a spirit of tolerance and independence, and had a full right to the boasts in which he certainly indulged a little ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... only one sauce were a constant source of amused annoyance. The German professors and students, who in the early part of the nineteenth century lauded English constitutional liberty to the skies and made a god of Burke, have soured toward England since. ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... and this aroused the active enmity of the Germans. Eastern politicians warned those of Kansas not to imperil the negro's chance by taking up the woman question. Mr. Greeley, who at the beginning of the campaign warmly espoused woman suffrage in Kansas,[42] soured by his experience in the New York Constitutional Convention, withdrew the support of the Tribune and threw his influence against the amendment. Even the Independent, under the editorship of Tilton, was so ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... had cleared off every penny, and for thirteen months, on Sundays, wore her mourning with a mute, forbidding grimness: the bitter thought that, unbeknown to her, Jake had acted dishonestly in money matters, and that he had ended his days in riotous sin, soured her pride, imbued her with a rancorous hostility against all the world. For she was a very proud woman, independent, holding her head high, so folks said, like a Garstin bred and born; and Anthony, although some reckoned him quiet and of ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various

... richest glow and fervour of youthful imagination. Pope was neither a Burns, nor a Byron, nor a Keats; but here, if anywhere, we should find those qualities in which he has most affinity to the poets of passion or of sensuous emotion, not soured by experience or purified by reflection. The motives of the two poems were skilfully chosen. Pope—as has already appeared to some extent—was rarely original in his designs; he liked to have the ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... then I don't suppose it would amount to much anything I could say to him. I wouldn't like to say anything to vex or worry him. He has had a deal of trouble one way and another, since he came to the place, and it has kind of soured him, but he is always as sweet as milk to me. You aren't going away, are you, Mr Maxwell? There, I have tired you all out with my talk, and I've tired myself too. But don't you hurry away. I'll go and step round ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson

... defending Alton Church (I have heard), in the very pulpit. This Colonel Bolle bowed to me very courteously, but the earl (as one could tell at first sight) was sulky: belike by deprivation of his favourite drink. Or perhaps the ale he took in lieu of it—he had a tankard at his elbow—had soured ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... kindled and fanned, by the broken promises of Louis XV., by the indifference of Spain. He had become 'a wild man,' as his father's secretary, Edgar, calls him—'Our dear wild man.' He spelled the name 'L'ome sauvage.' He was, in brief, a desperate, a soured, and a homeless outcast. His chief French friends were ladies—Madame de Vasse, Madame de Talmond, and others. Montesquieu, living in their society, and sending wine from his estate to the Jacobite Lord Elibank; rejoicing, too, in ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... women, and children. The last of these hordes was exceedingly troublesome, and I really thought we should have been obliged to quarrel with them. Whether it was that we were getting impatient, or that our tempers were soured, I know not, but even M'Leay, whose partiality towards the natives was excessive at the commencement of our journey, now became weary of such constant communication as we had kept up with them. Their sameness of appearance, the disgusting diseases that raged among them, their ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... several years; taller, darker, soured by a great disappointment—so 'twas said—loved my Lord Benneville with all the affection his selfish nature allowed. And Benneville returned it frankly, in his open boyish fashion. They were ever together, and their ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... all oysters that are to be canned are absolutely fresh, have not "soured" and contain no spoiled oysters. Oysters are opened by hand. All oysters should be rejected that have partly open shells, as this is a sign that the oyster is dead and consequently not ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray

... to which the little saint was subjected soured his temper. His kind nurses had choked him twice a day with incense, and now he had inhaled for seven hours the air of the Queen's Bench. On his return to the convent he was hastily fed, and carried to the chapel to give thanks for the victory of the day. Wrapped in a handsome chasuble, ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... manner of womenfolk—in politics," he explained to his guests. "These dangersome days have given her sore affliction by way of parting comrades of her childhood, and others whom she has much affected. It has in some sort soured her." ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte

... them in their habits of life cause great change in the substances in which they live. For example, when living in a sugary substance they change the sugar into a gas and an alcohol. Do you remember the bright bubbles of gas you have seen rising in sweet cider or in wine as it soured? These bubbles are caused by one of these small plants—the yeast plant. As the yeast plant grows in the sweet fruit juice, alcohol is made and a gas is given off at the same time, and ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... That's what I'd recommend all wives to do who wish to preserve their good looks. A woman's beauty depends so much upon expression, that if that's spoilt, farewell to all her charms, and which nothing tends more to bring about than a countenance soured with imaginary cares, instead of lighted up with thankfulness for innumerable blessings—that's what makes half the women wither away into wrinkles so early in life; whilst nothing renders their beauty so lasting as that placid look of pure benevolence, which emanates ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... attentive. There is good blood in the Italian strain. They are an art and music-loving people, and in this respect the southern Italians take the lead. They come from a land of beauty and fame, song and sunshine, and bring a sunny temperament not easily soured by hardship or disappointment. Otherwise the tenement and labor-camp experiences in America would soon spoil them. With the exception of the money they earn, the change has ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose

... at the hilarious crowd. It was plain to be seen that any supply of milk of human kindness he may have had was long since soured. ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson

... arms over the bed and buried her face in them. "And I am to be sacrificed," she had said, in a flat voice. "I am to go through my life like mother, soured and unhappy. Without any ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... prodded it behind, heaved rocks at it, cut a sapling, got up his enthusiasm, and wildly whacked the light horse whenever the other showed signs of moving—but he never succeeded in starting both horses at one and the same time. Moreover the youth was cheeky, and the selector's temper had been soured: he cursed the boy along with the horses, the plough, the selection, the squatter, and Australia. Yes, he cursed Australia. The boy cursed back, was chastised, and immediately went home ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... Zephine," reply I, bitterly, thinking, with a lively exasperation, of the changed and demoralized Algy I had last seen—soured, ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... further along the road. From forty to fifty, and nearer fifty than forty, was maintained to be the fateful age. Youth has innocence, ambition, enthusiasm, ideals. Youth has generous impulses, has not yet been soured by disappointments, has not yet found out the cynicism of the world, has not become infected by the canker of covetousness. It has made no enemies, is not corrupted by success, is not daunted by failure. A score of years later ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... Iglesias," he protested. "I was a fool to say that. But I am utterly beaten by work and by worry. I do not deny that you have behaved handsomely to me. But persistent injustice and cruelty have soured me. Is it wonderful? And then to-night those blatant young idiots, Farge and Worthington, have set my nerves on edge by their imbecility and conceit, till I really am not accountable for what I say. I had better go. We can ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... became neither soured nor a pessimist. Many of his late portraits are even more energetic than those of his early maturity. He shows himself a wise man of the world. "Do not be a grovelling sycophant," some of them seem to say, "but remember that courtly manners and tempered elegance ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson

... living in a state of continual uneasiness and ferment, softened only by the miserable consolation of giving now and then preferments to those for whom they have no value; they are unhappy in their situation, yet find it impossible to resign. Until, at length, soured in temper, and disappointed by the very attainment of their ends, in some angry, in some haughty, or some negligent moment, they incur the displeasure of those upon whom they have rendered their very being dependent. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... royalists to receive the exiled king, added to habitual indisposition, had soured and irritated the temper of Cromwell. He saw that to bring to trial the men who had been his associates in the cause might prove a dangerous experiment; but there was nothing to deter him from wreaking his vengeance on the royalists, and convincing them of the danger ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... I'd like to, though I don't think I'll have much of a chance, Frank, because you see he's shut down on us, and forbidden us to ever look in on him after this. Now what do you reckon ails the man, and why should he act in that way? He must have just soured on the world for ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen

... bad, and a bad man worse." With equal truth it may be said that, without a single exception, flogging makes a good boy bad, and a bad boy worse. How many men owe their ferocity to the canings they received when school-boys! The early floggings hardened and soured them, and ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... citizen to such an enormous amount. It must be allowed in favor of those tyrants of antiquity, that what was done by them could hardly be said to be done in cold blood. Their passions were inflamed, their tempers soured, their understandings confused with the spirit of revenge, with the innumerable reciprocated and recent inflictions and retaliations of blood and rapine. They were driven beyond all bounds of moderation by the apprehension of the return of power ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... guess it started with the pigs. No, let's see: first about the trees. Da chopped off a lot of Elm trees that looked terrible nice from her windy. She's awful queer about a tree. She hates to see 'em cut down, an' that soured her same as if she owned 'em. Then there wuz the pigs. You see, one winter she was awful hard up, an' she had two pigs worth, maybe, $5.00 each—anyway, she said they was, an' she ought to know, for they lived right in the shanty with ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... or {90} managing the voice is learned, though the individual may have a natural aptitude for these performances. Temperament and emotional traits we usually think of as belonging to a man's "nature", though we have to admit that a naturally cheerful disposition may be soured by ill treatment. On the other hand, while we reckon habits, such as profanity, or free spending, or an erect carriage, as belonging with the acquired traits, we know that some natures are prone to ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... The feeling that substantial justice is being done them renders them on the whole much more manly, straightforward, and truthful. They work more cheerfully, and are more obliging to one another and their employers. They are not soured, as under the old system, by brooding over the injustice done them; and their spare minutes are not spent to the same extent in criticizing ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor

... in accordance with my notions of Arab hospitality. Perhaps he did not wish me to espy what was going on about him in company with Shaikh Fendi el Faiz, so I took my leave, riding towards Cocab. At an Arab encampment we got some Leben Sheneeni, (soured fresh milk, most delicious in hot weather,) and drank almost a pailful of it between myself, the kawwas, and the muleteer. The heat was prodigious. In the camp were only women and children at home: the ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... poverty Edward Conway had gone, until now, hopelessly mortgaged, hopelessly besotted, hopelessly soured, he lived the diseased product of weakness, ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... especially in the early part of his reign; but after Napoleon's final defeat, his views gradually changed. The burdens of absolute government, disappointments, the alienation of friends, and the bitter experiences which all sovereigns must learn soured his temper, which was naturally amiable, and made him a prey to terror and despondency. No longer was he the frank, generous, chivalrous, and magnanimous prince who had called out general admiration, but a disappointed, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... solicitude over his slender wardrobe, and his revenues were derived from sources so uncertain that he seemed to maintain his outwardly placid existence only through a series of lucky chances. But adversity had not soured Mr. Dreux; it had not dimmed his pride nor coarsened his appreciation of beauty; he remained the gentle, suave, and agreeably cynical beau. Young girls had been known to rave over him, despite their mother's frowns; fathers and brothers called ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... whether he doesn't feel soured at the thought that the death of the captain will prevent his getting such a large reward for his services?" said the mate to himself, who, after thinking over the matter for a few minutes longer, reached a conclusion. "We expected to reach Wauparmur Island to-night, before dark. We shall be late, ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... common adventurers of the ordinary type. Born in a lower station, Gilly Jillingham might have taken honours as a "prig"; in his own with less luck he might have been an Ishmaelite generally shunned. Phillipa also might have degenerated into a mere soured cackling hanger-on; but they were not pariahs by caste, but Brahmins, and entitled to all due honour so long as they floated on top of the wave. Perhaps if near drowning no finger would have been outstretched to save; but ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... I pity the man who is not able to stand out in the broad sunlight, with other men, and to feel that he has as goodly a frame and as fine blood and as pleasant a presence as the average of those he sees around him. I do not wonder at all that many of these persons become soured and embittered and jealous. A sensitive mind, dwelling long upon misfortunes of this peculiar character, will inevitably become morbid; and multitudes of humbler men than Lord Byron have cursed their fate as bitterly ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... In fact, he spoke to no one, but did his work at the mill like a man in a dream. Some there were who tried to break through his stony reserve, but no one succeeded. Tom Lecky had become hard and soured. He remained alone in the mill—except for the mice, and for these he set traps. He caught a great many, and plunged them, trap and all, into a bucket of water. When he found a trap with a mouse in it he would look at the little creature ...
— Tom, Dot and Talking Mouse and Other Bedtime Stories • J. G. Kernahan and C. Kernahan

... fond reminiscence of Oxford, is in a vein which Mr Arnold did not often work, but which always yielded him gold. In the words about Newman, one seems to recognise very much more than meets the ear—an explanation of much in the Arnoldian gospel, on something like the principle of revulsion, of soured love, which accounts for still more in the careers of his contemporaries, Mr Pattison and Mr Froude. He is less happy on Carlyle—he never was very happy on Carlyle, and for obvious reasons—but ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... giving friendly advice, he treated him with coldness and neglect.[3] The only apology for this is that suggested by Southey.[4] "The Governor, who had causes enough to disquiet him, arising from the precarious state of the Colony, was teased and soured by the complaints which were perpetually brought against the two brothers, and soon began to wish that he had brought with him men of more practicable tempers." In some hours of calmer reflection, however, he felt the compunctious ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... was sharp of countenance, with thin cheeks and a prominent nose. Her voice, too, had a pinch of asperity about it. By nature she was critical of her fellow creatures. No man had desired her, and the fact soured her a little and led to a general ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... that privilege strictly to some of our friends in Washington," said old Frisby, whose temper had been soured probably by a neglect to recognize his long services; "and most of them I should by all means insist on sending to the Moon. Every month I would ram a whole raft of them into the Columbiad, with a charge under them strong enough to blow them all to ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... physicians, sir, and we do not trouble ourselves concerning the seat of our complaint, whilst its effects are killing us with pain. It was evident that every spark of affection was extinguished in my father's breast, that his disposition was soured, and that, cause or no cause, misery must be our daily bread. I could not sleep that night, and I rose from my bed in the morning, determined to speak boldly to my father on what had taken place. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... hope soured on me Of my fellow-critter's aid,— I jest flopped down on my marrow-bones, Crotch-deep in the snow, and prayed. * * * * * By this, the torches was played out, And me and Isrul Parr Went off for some wood to a sheepfold That he said was somewhar thar. We ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... "I have asked myself that question more than once without obtaining a satisfactory answer to it. I should like to do so, were it possible, for I am very heartily sick of the life that I am now leading. There was a time when, soured and embittered by as cruel a wrong as man could inflict upon his fellow man, I believed that I could find consolation, if not actual happiness, in the wreaking of my vengeance upon every Englishman whom I could get into my power, ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... with a most serious duty: she had adopted a mission, and that mission was the regeneration of James Done. The regeneration was not to be so much religious as moral. The poor boy's life was disordered; he had suffered some great wrong; his naturally beautiful, brave, generous disposition was soured; he had lost faith in God and in woman, and it remained for her to restore his belief, to teach him that his fellow-creatures were in the main animated with the most excellent motives, and to drive away all those strange, ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... Joe's mother. It seemed to her that Joe's mother had met life and conquered it, and so would never grow old. She never found the older woman soured or bitter or enfeebled. Even about death there ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim



Words linked to "Soured" :   off, turned, sour, unsoured, soured cream



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com