taste
nounverbadjectivecommon in dialogue
- //teɪst//
One of the sensations produced by the tongue in response to certain chemicals; the quality of giving this sensation.
noun
- 1
One of the sensations produced by the tongue in response to certain chemicals; the quality of giving this sensation.
He had a strange taste in his mouth.
Venison has a strong taste.
Like smell, taste has been found to imprint our minds with strong memories.
- 2
The sense that consists in the perception and interpretation of this sensation.
His taste was impaired by an illness.
- 3
A small sample of food, drink, or recreational drugs.
- 4
A person's implicit set of preferences, especially esthetic, though also culinary, sartorial, etc.
Dr. Parker has good taste in wine.
That's very true indeed Sir Peter! after having married you I should never pretend to Taste again I allow.
"My tastes," he said, still smiling, "incline me to the garishly sunlit side of this planet." And, to tease her and arouse her to combat: "I prefer a farandole to a nocturne; I'd rather have a painting than an etching; Mr. Whistler bores me with his monochromatic mud; I don't like dull colours, dull sounds, dull intellects;[…]."
The huge square box, parquet-floored and high-ceilinged, had been arranged to display a suite of bedroom furniture designed and made in the halcyon days of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when modish taste was just due to go clean out of fashion for the best part of the next hundred years.
- 5
Personal preference; liking; predilection.
I have developed a taste for fine wine.
- 6
figurativeA small amount of experience with something that gives a sense of its quality as a whole.
Such anecdotes give one a taste of life on a trauma ward.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Bernard, what do you want? / Bernard Woolley: I want to have a clear conscience. / […] / Sir Humphrey Appleby: When did you acquire this taste for luxuries (laugh track)?
I'm all out of luck / I'm all out of faith / I would give everything just for one taste / But everything's here, all out of place[…]
- 7
A kind of narrow and thin silk ribbon.
- 8
The least amount or portion of something; a jot.
"So he opened the door very quitely, an' didn't make a taste o' n'ise in the wurld, an' luked all about, but the niver a bit o' the little man cud he see anywhare, but he h'ard his hammerin' and whis'lin', an' so he luked and luked, till at last he seen the little fellow[.]"
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”).
verb
- 1
To sample the flavor of something orally.
when the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine
- 2
To have a taste; to excite a particular sensation by which flavor is distinguished.
The chicken tasted great, but the milk tasted like garlic.
- 3
To identify (a flavor) by sampling something orally.
I can definitely taste the marzipan in this cake.
- 4
figurativeTo experience.
I tasted in her arms the delights of paradise.
They had not yet tasted the sweetness of freedom.
He […] should taste death for every man.
Cowards dye many times before their deaths, / The valiant neuer taſte of death but once: […]
- 5
To take sparingly.
1699, John Dryden, Epistle to John Drydenhttps://books.google.es/books?id=0fo_AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA147&dq=%22Age+but+tastes+of+pleasures,+youth+devours%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwihhoWhjrzqAhV9URUIHYdFCJw4ChDoATAAegQIBBAC#v=onepage&q=%22Age%20but%20tastes%20of%20pleasures%2C%20youth%20devours%22&f=false Age but tastes of pleasures, youth devours.
- 6
To try by eating a little; to eat a small quantity of.
I tasted a little of this honey.
- 7
obsoleteTo try by the touch; to handle.
to taste the bow
adjective
- 1
Variant of tastyDeliberate misspelling of tasty.
Forms
- plural
- tastes
- past tense
- tasted
- past participle
- tasted
- present participle
- tasting
- third person singular
- tastes
taste · One of the sensations produced by the tongue in response to certain chemicals; the quality of giving this sensation.
tasting · A small amount of food or drink.tasty · Having a pleasant or satisfying flavor.tat · Cheap and vulgar tastelessness; sleaze.