Three consonants carry one taste: sour. Dough left to ferment turns sour (and becomes chametz, the leaven banned at Passover); milk turns; wine becomes vinegar. The same root then climbs into the chemistry lab and names acid and even oxygen. And in a beautiful idiom, to "go sour" on a chance means to miss it. One root spans the kitchen, the seder table, and the periodic table. Every word here is verified against pealim, niqqud included.
The same root runs through the verb system. Each binyan is a voice: it bends the one idea into active, passive, causative or reciprocal. Tap to hear.
The pa'al is the thing going sour on its own; the hif'il adds a causative twist and, idiomatically, the sense of letting a chance "go sour", to miss it. The other binyanim are not lexicalized for this root.
Same root letters, different noun moulds (mishkalim). The mould tells you the function: who does it, the act of doing it, or the thing produced.
Strip the prefixes, suffixes and vowels. Three consonants remain, and the meaning lives there.