🌳 A fruit tree 🥒 A sour fruit

sour gourd

8.9

A sour edible fruit with hard skin used in cooking

noun

Australian

: calabaza agria

Adding chopped sour gourd to the curry gave it a unique, tart flavor.

Examples

The villagers gathered sour gourds from the fields for the evening meal.
She made a tangy sauce using the pulp of sour gourd.
The sour gourd is often used in traditional dishes.
Have you ever tasted a sour gourd?
The villagers gathered sour gourds from the fields for the evening meal.
She made a tangy sauce using the pulp of sour gourd.
Adding chopped sour gourd to the curry gave it a unique, tart flavor.

Surface Forms

sour gourd singular

sour gourds plural

Morphology

sour + gourd

The noun phrase is compositionally built from 'sour' (acid-tasting) + 'gourd' (a cucurbit/plant), so its meaning — a gourd (or tree/fruit resembling a gourd) that is sour — can be directly inferred. This follows the common adjective+noun pattern and is not idiomatic or metaphorical, making it readily understandable to a B1 learner who knows the two words.

Etymology

Sour gourd is the name people gave to a fruit that looks like a gourd and tastes sour. Because cooks used its tart taste in food, the clear image of a 'sour' gourd stuck, so the name means this edible, sour-tasting fruit.