sourness
"sourness" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“sourness” is an uncommon English word, ranked #89,927 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #89,927
- frequency rank, English
- 8
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The condition or quality of being sour.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sourness |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #89,927 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “sourness” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sourness is 8 letters long, classified as a noun. Corpus data places it at rank #89,927 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "The condition or quality of being sour.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for sourness in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English sowrenesse, sournesse, from Old English sūrnes (“sourness”), equivalent to sour + -ness. The correct English form is sourness, spelled S-O-U-R-N-E-S-S.
Definition
- 1The condition or quality of being sour.
Etymology
From Middle English sowrenesse, sournesse, from Old English sūrnes (“sourness”), equivalent to sour + -ness.
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “sourness”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-O-U-R-N-E-S-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.