taste

Alternative forms

• tast (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English tasten, from Old French taster from assumed Vulgar Latin *taxitāre, a new iterative of Latin taxāre (“to touch sharply”), from tangere (“to touch”). Displaced native Middle English smaken, smakien (“to taste”) (from Old English smacian (“to taste”)), Middle English smecchen (“to taste, smack”) (from Old English smæċċan (“to taste”)), Middle English buriȝen (“to taste”) (from Old English byrigan, birian (“to taste”)).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /teɪst/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪst

Noun

taste (countable and uncountable, plural tastes)

1. One of the sensations produced by the tongue in response to certain chemicals (Wikipedia).
2. (countable and uncountable) A person's implicit set of preferences, especially esthetic, though also culinary, sartorial, etc. (Wikipedia).

   Dr. Parker has good taste in wine.

   • 1907, Robert William Chambers, chapter VIII, in The Younger Set (Project Gutenberg; EBook #14852), New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, published 1 February 2005 (Project Gutenberg version), OCLC 24962326:

     "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; […]."

   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 1, in The China Governess‎:

     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.

3. Personal preference; liking; predilection.

   I have developed a taste for fine wine.

4. (uncountable, figuratively) A small amount of experience with something that gives a sense of its quality as a whole.
5. A kind of narrow and thin silk ribbon.

Verb

taste (third-person singular simple present tastes, present participle tasting, simple past and past participle tasted)

1. (transitive) To sample the flavor of something orally.
   • Bible, John ii. 9

     when the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine

2. (intransitive) To have a taste; to excite a particular sensation by which flavour is distinguished.

   The chicken tasted great, but the milk tasted like garlic.

3. To experience.

   I tasted in her arms the delights of paradise.

   They had not yet tasted the sweetness of freedom.

   • Bible, Heb. ii. 9

     He […] should taste death for every man.

   • c. 1599, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Ivlivs Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies, London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, Act II, scene ii, page 117, column 1:

     Cowards dye many times before their deaths, / The valiant neuer taſte of death but once: […]

   • Milton

     Thou […] wilt taste / No pleasure, though in pleasure, solitary.

4. To take sparingly.
   • Dryden

     Age but tastes of pleasures, youth devours.

5. To try by eating a little; to eat a small quantity of.
   • Bible, 1 Sam. xiv. 29

     I tasted a little of this honey.

6. (obsolete) To try by the touch; to handle.
   • Chapman

     to taste a bow

Further reading

• taste in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• taste in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
• taste at OneLook Dictionary Search
• "taste" in Raymond Williams, Keywords (revised), 1983, Fontana Press, page 313.

Anagrams

• State, Testa, aetts, atest, state, teats, testa

Verb

taste (imperative tast, infinitive at taste, present tense taster, past tense tastede, perfect tense har/er tastet)

1. To type

Pronunciation

• Audio

  (file)

Verb

taste

1. (archaic) singular present subjunctive of tasten

Verb

taste

1. First-person singular present of tasten.
2. First-person singular subjunctive I of tasten.
3. Third-person singular subjunctive I of tasten.
4. Imperative singular of tasten.

Verb

taste (imperative tast, present tense taster, passive tastes, simple past and past participle tasta or tastet, present participle tastende)

1. to type (on a computer keyboard or typewriter)

References

• “taste” in The Bokmål Dictionary.