verjuice - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Middle English verjous, vergeous, from Old French vertjus, verjus (French verjus), from vert +‎ jus. First attested in c. 1302.

verjuice (usually uncountable, plural verjuices)

  1. A very acidic juice made by pressing unripe grapes, crab-apples, or other sour fruit.
    • 1631, Francis [Bacon], “I. Century.”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], 3rd edition, London: […] William Rawley […]; [p]rinted by J[ohn] H[aviland] for William Lee […], →OCLC, paragraph 79, page 25:
      In this inſtance, there is (vpon the by) to be noted the Percolation, or Suing of the Veriuyce thorow the VVood; So as it ſeemeth, it muſt be firſt in a kinde of Vapour, before it paſſe.
    • 1863, Charles Reade, Hard Cash‎[1]:
      Alfred pulled a face as of one that drinketh verjuice unawares; but let it pass: hypercriticism was not his cue just then.
    • 1886, Charlotte Mary Yonge, Chantry House:
      She looked sour as verjuice when my mother and Emily entered, and gave them to understand that ‘she wasn’t used to no strangers in her school, and didn’t want ’em.’

very acidic juice

verjuice (third-person singular simple present verjuices, present participle verjuicing, simple past and past participle verjuiced)

  1. (transitive) To render something sour; to embitter.
    • 1892, W[illiam] G[eorge] Thorpe, “Early Life and School Days”, in The Still Life of the Middle Temple with Some of Its Table Talk Preceded by Fifty Years’ Reminiscences, London: Richard Bentley and Son […], page 3:
      There are few names to which a jingle or a joke cannot be fitted—witness, Twining, banker and tea-dealer: / ‘Twining would be whining / Were’t not for his tea;’ / and the ex-Lord Mayor, Sir John Key, where the inherent rhyme to ‘donkey’ verjuiced the baronetcy.