soursop

From sour +‎ sop.^[1]

• IPA^(key): /ˈsaʊəɹˌsɒp/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɒp

soursop (plural soursops)

1. A small tropical evergreen tree, Annona muricata.
2. The tart, spiny, yellow-green fruit of this tree.
   • 2023 September 29, Molly Fitzpatrick, “He’s the Pawpaw King of Brooklyn. (What’s a Pawpaw?)”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     For a plant whose preferred growing region is the temperate zone of North America, the pawpaw is an uncannily exotic-tasting delicacy, a far-flung cousin of the tropical soursop, or guanábana.

3. Bermuda buttercup (Oxalis pes-caprae), an edible wood sorrel native to South Africa
   • 1898, Queensland Agricultural Journal, volume 3, page 175:

     SOURSOP WEED (OXALIS CERNUA).
     This rather pretty looking flower has become a great pest in many gardens around the city. We are asked how it is to be got rid of. Although not nearly so difficult of eradication as nut-grass, yet so many hundreds of minute bulbs gather round the parent bulb that the more the ground is stirred the greater the area infested. We know however of no destructive agent which could be applied to it in a flower garden without at the same time injuring the flowers. The surest way is dig up the bulbs on the clear ground and pick them off, and amongst the flowers to constantly pull up the leaf-stalks. […]

   • 1919, A.G. Edquist, “Notes on the vitality of the Soursop (Oxalis cernua)”, in South Australia Naturalist, volume 1, pages 4–5:

     [see the title already]

   1. (by extension) any wood sorrel, especially when used as food
      • 1905, The Journal of the Department of Agriculture of South Australia, volume 8, page 701:

        Soursop. Mr. J. E. Taylor read a short paper on the “Soursop” (Oxalis). It was to be regretted that those who introduced this weed were not better acquainted with its habits.

      • 1940, The Journal of the Department of Agriculture of South Australia, volume 38, pages 435, 436:

        Unmanured soils growing sorrel, soursop (Oxalis spp.) and similar acid-loving plants, will usually produce pasture and other forages low in both lime and phosphoric acid. […] Similarly, lime is required to neutralize many acids which are characteristic of some plants such as sorrel, soursop, rhubarb, &c.

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:soursop.

• (all senses): soursob
• (tree, fruit): guanabana

• custard apple (“tree of the genus Annona”)

• annonaceous

• sporous