ppl. a. [f. SOUR v.]
1. Rendered sour or acid; fermented, leavened.
1382. Wyclif, Exod. xii. 15. Who so euer etith sowred breed.
1535. Coverdale, Exod. xiii. 7. That there be no … sowred bred sene in all thy quarters.
1659. Gauden, Serm. (1660), 120. As sowred vinegar is made of the sweetest wine.
1670. Covel, in Early Voy. Levant (Hakluyt Soc.), 120. With leaven of salt and sower’d honey and oil.
1721. R. Keith, trans. T. à Kempis, Solil. Soul, x. 177. I am like a soured Vessel and wholly unworthy of the Inpouring of thy good Spirit.
1873. Tristram, Moab, xiii. 238. A bowl of soured milk—a most delicious draught on a broiling day.
2. Of persons: Embittered, crabbed.
1848. Thackeray, Van. Fair, l. Miss Clapp … is declared by the soured old lady to be an unbearable and impudent little minx.
1857. W. Collins, Dead Secret, III. i. He returned to his father’s house, a soured man at the outset of life.
1885. Miss Braddon, Wyllard’s Weird, II. i. 24. Even a soured old maid such as I could but yield to her charm.
Hence Souredness.
1858. Gilfillan, in Wyatt’s Poet. Wks., p. xvi. In his Satires we find what we may call a mellowed souredness of spirit.
