Word.ws English Dictionary

sourwood

sourwood noun: a North American deciduous shrubby tree, of the genus Oxydendrum, having deep fissures in its bark, and sour-tasting leaves.

Noun

sourwood (plural sourwoods)

  1. A North American deciduous shrubby tree, of the genus Oxydendrum, having deep fissures in its bark, and sour-tasting leaves.
    • I let him chew the tip of a burgundy leaf and taste how sourwood got its name.2021, Richard Powers, Bewilderment, Hutchinson Heinemann, page 17
  2. An Australian tree, of the genus Hibiscus; the sorrel tree.

Forms of sourwood

pluralsourwoods

Origin of sourwood

From sour + wood.

Questions about sourwood

What does sourwood mean?
Sourwood means a North American deciduous shrubby tree, of the genus Oxydendrum, having deep fissures in its bark, and sour-tasting leaves.
What part of speech is sourwood?
Sourwood is a noun.
What is the plural of sourwood?
The plural of sourwood is sourwoods.

Words near sourwood in the dictionary

  1. sourtop blueberries
  2. sourtop blueberry
  3. sourveld
  4. sourvelds
  5. sourweed
  6. sourwood
  7. sourwoods
  8. soury
  9. sous
  10. sous chef
  11. sous chefs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sourwood (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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