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taste

Pronunciation: /teɪst/

The English word “taste” has 15 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. One of the sensations produced by the tongue in response to certain chemicals; the quality of giving this sensation.
  2. The sense that consists in the perception and interpretation of this sensation.
  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.
  5. Personal preference; liking; predilection.
  6. A small amount of experience with something that gives a sense of its quality as a whole.
  7. A kind of narrow and thin silk ribbon.
  8. The least amount or portion of something; a jot.

verb

  1. To sample the flavor of something orally.
  2. To have a taste; to excite a particular sensation by which flavor is distinguished.
  3. To identify (a flavor) by sampling something orally.
  4. To experience.
  5. To take sparingly.
  6. To try by eating a little; to eat a small quantity of.
  7. To try by the touch; to handle.

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…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.