sourwood
noun
sourwood is a noun meaning “A North American deciduous shrubby tree, of the genus Oxydendrum, having deep fissures in its bark, and sour-tasting leaves” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-O-U-R-W-O-O-D, and it appears about once in every 78 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of sourwood is sourwoods.
What does sourwood mean?
noun
- 1
A North American deciduous shrubby tree, of the genus Oxydendrum, having deep fissures in its bark, and sour-tasting leaves.
- 2
An Australian tree, of the genus Hibiscus; the sorrel tree.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of sourwood
- sourwoods plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is sourwood?
Sourwood appears about once in every 78 million words in written English, the 279,513th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does sourwood come from?
From sour + wood.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).