Acidic means sharp and biting, like citrus or vinegar. An acidic wine, acidic soil, acidic and bright.
In cooking, acidity is what lifts a dish and cuts richness — a squeeze of lemon on something heavy is doing chemistry as well as flavour. In gardening, acidic soil suits some plants and starves others, which is why testing it comes first. Note acid, from the Latin for sour.
1adjectiveacidicSharp and biting in taste.
“This wine is too acidic for me; it makes my mouth pucker.”
2adjectivebelowHaving a pH below seven.
“Acidic soil at roughly pH four.”
acidic is a quality of sourness.
Acid plus -ic, from Latin acidus, sour, from acere, to be sour. Acute and acrid come from the same sharpness.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂eḱ-
French
acide
English
acid
English, today
acidic
Built from
From acid + -ic. a doublet of acidy. acid Borrowed from French acide. From French acide, from Latin acidus (“sour, acid”), from aceō (“to be sour”). a doublet of agita.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA