taste

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   To notice or recognize the flavour of food or drink in your mouth.

   Can you taste the garlic in this sauce?

2. 2
   verb

   To have a particular flavour.

   This soup tastes of lemon and ginger.

3. 3
   noun

   A small amount of food or drink that you try.

   Have a taste of this cake and tell me what you think.

4. 4
   noun

   A short experience of something.

   The trip gave me a taste of life in a big city.

5. 5
   noun

   A person's ability to judge what is attractive, stylish, or of good quality.

   She has excellent taste in clothes.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Taste entered Middle English from Old French: the noun came from tast, while the verb came from taster, “touch, try, taste.” The verb may represent a blend of Latin tangere, “touch,” and gustare, “taste.” Taste initially also had the sense “touch.”

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. Almos…

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