vinegary
adjective
vinegary is an adjective meaning “Sour; like vinegar” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled V-I-N-E-G-A-R-Y, and it appears about once in every 18 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does vinegary mean?
adjective
- 1
Sour; like vinegar.
When Martha reopened the bottle of wine from the previous week's party, a vinegary whiff indicated that drinking it was out of the question.
- 2
Acerbic, bitter, irritable.
Edward's maiden aunt was a vinegary old soul with a sharp tongue and quick temper; she would not be receiving a wedding invitation.
- 3
Of a liquid, having turned partially or fully to vinegar.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce vinegary?
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-vinegary.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of vinegary
- more vinegary comparative
- most vinegary superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is vinegary?
Vinegary appears about once in every 18 million words in written English, the 127,184th 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 vinegary come from?
From vinegar + -y.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).