taste
Meanings
- One of the sensations produced by the tongue in response to certain chemicals; the quality of giving this sensation.
- The sense that consists in the perception and interpretation of this sensation.
- A small sample of food, drink, or recreational drugs.
- A person's implicit set of preferences, especially esthetic, though also culinary, sartorial, etc.
- Personal preference; liking; predilection.
- A small amount of experience with something that gives a sense of its quality as a whole.
- A kind of narrow and thin silk ribbon.
- To sample the flavor of something orally.
- To have a taste; to excite a particular sensation by which flavor is distinguished.
- To identify (a flavor) by sampling something orally.
- To experience.
- To take sparingly.
- To try by eating a little; to eat a small quantity of.
- To try by the touch; to handle.
- Deliberate misspelling of tasty.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
The verb is from Middle English tasten, borrowed from Old French taster (“to taste, touch or hit”), from unattested Vulgar Latin *tastāre (“to touch or feel”), from *taxitāre, an innovated iterative form of Classical Latin taxāre (“to touch sharply”), from tangere (“to touch, to grasp”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *teh₂g-, which is assumed to have had the same meaning as tangere. The noun came from the verb, and the two conflated after English lost its infinitive suffix -en, though tasten was most likely already used nominatively (as a gerund), similar to Modern English tasting. Almost fully displaced native smack, from Middle English smac, smak, smacke, from Old English smæc, smæċċ (“taste, smatch”). Displaced English smatch, from Middle English smacchen, smecchen, from Old English smæċċan (“to taste; to smack”); displaced also Middle English buriȝen, from Old English bierġan (“to taste”).