paste

American  

[peyst] / peɪst /

noun

pastes plural

1. a mixture of flour and water, often with starch or the like, used for causing paper or other material to adhere to something.

2. any soft, smooth, and plastic material or preparation.

3. dough, especially when prepared with shortening, as for making pie crust and other pastry.

   puff paste.

4. any of various semisoft fruit confections of pliable consistency.

   almond paste; guava paste.

5. a preparation of fish, tomatoes, or other food reduced to a smooth, soft mass, as for a relish or for seasoning.

6. pasta.

7. a mixture of clay, water, etc., for making pottery or porcelain.

8. Jewelry.

   1. a brilliant, heavy glass, as strass, used for making artificial gems.

   2. an artificial gem of this material.

9. Slang. a hard smack, blow, or punch, especially on the face.

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verb (used with object)

pastes, present (3rd person singular) pasted, past participle, past pasting present participle

1. to fasten or stick with paste or the like.

2. to cover with something applied by means of paste.

3. Slang. to hit (a person) hard, especially on the face.

4. Computers. to insert (copied text, images, etc.) into a file.

verb (used without object)

pastes, present (3rd person singular) pasted, past participle, past pasting present participle

1. Computers. to insert copied text, images, etc., into a file.

paste ¹ British  

/ peɪst /

noun

1. a mixture or material of a soft or malleable consistency, such as toothpaste

2. an adhesive made from water and flour or starch, used esp for joining pieces of paper

3. a preparation of food, such as meat, that has been powdered to a creamy mass, for spreading on bread, crackers, etc

4. any of various sweet doughy confections

   almond paste

5. dough, esp when prepared with shortening, as for making pastry

6. 1. Also called: strass.  a hard shiny glass used for making imitation gems

   2. an imitation gem made of this glass

7. the combined ingredients of porcelain See also hard paste soft paste

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verb

1. to attach by or as if by using paste

   he pasted posters onto the wall

2. (usually foll by with) to cover (a surface) with paper, usually attached with an adhesive

   he pasted the wall with posters

paste ² British  

/ peɪst /

verb

1. slang (tr) to hit, esp with the fists; punch or beat soundly

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• semipaste
  noun
• prepaste
  verb (used with object)
• repaste
  verb (used with object)
• unpaste
  verb (used with object)

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• pastes
  plural

Participles

• pasting
  present
• pasted
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• paste
  simple
• pastes
  simple
• have pasted
  perfect
• has pasted
  perfect
• am pasting
  progressive
• are pasting
  progressive
• is pasting
  progressive
• have been pasting
  perfect progressive
• has been pasting
  perfect progressive

Past

• pasted
  simple
• had pasted
  perfect
• was pasting
  progressive
• were pasting
  progressive
• had been pasting
  perfect progressive

Future

• will paste
  simple
• will have pasted
  perfect
• will be pasting
  progressive
• will have been pasting
  perfect progressive

Etymology

Origin of paste

1350–1400; Middle English < Middle French < Late Latin pasta dough < Greek pastá barley porridge, noun use of neuter plural of pastós, verbid of pássein to strew, sprinkle; a pasta was originally a kind of gruel sprinkled with salt; paste ( defs. 9, 12 ) probably by association with baste ³

Explanation

Paste is like glue. If you paste something, you stick it onto something else. You might copy and paste info from one document to another on your computer, or literally paste posters all over town. Just don’t use tomato paste. Some foods take the form of a paste, like cake frosting or pâté. There's also the kind of paste you can use for gluing paper — like wallpaper paste, for example. Costume jewelry, which resembles gemstones but is relatively inexpensive, is made from another, harder kind of paste. To paste something is to stick it together, to patch it, or to cover it with paper. The Late Latin root is pasta, or "dough."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

paste pastes pasted pasting

During our Zoom, with the background carefully faded behind her wavy blond bob, she promises that she doesn’t just copy and paste her subjects and settings from what sells.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2026

“If I have leftover olives from making a bunch of martinis, I can crack open a can of tuna and some tomato paste and I’m halfway to a puttanesca. Very happy about that,” he says.

From Salon ● Jul. 2, 2026

You can either copy and paste that directly into a chat box or read it out over the phone to a representative.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 23, 2026

The chef joked that the green stuff on our plate was avocado paste.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 3, 2026

There's a glob of paste poking out from Max's cap.

From "The Sky at Our Feet" by Nadia Hashimi

And Thomas just copies and pastes that stuff right into his dissent.

From Slate ● May 15, 2026

Seeds and pitted fruits can also be added in the form of pastes, purees and syrups.

From Salon ● Jan. 17, 2026

With shelves full of whitening, charcoal, and enamel-boosting pastes, it's easy to assume the pricier options will give you a healthier smile.

From BBC ● Nov. 2, 2025

The development of new pastes advanced the formation and integration of sculpture; and “paste on paste” permitted the use of incised bas-reliefs.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 1, 2025

Leeches crawled over my limbs to help me push through, and I had to eat pastille cakes and skin-color pastes to quiet my stomach.

From "The Belles" by Dhonielle Clayton

We carried the empty paper bag home with us on the plane, taking care not to rip it, and then pasted it into in our scrapbook.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 20, 2026

She stepped into the bathroom, rubbed some adhesive across her face, pasted on the fake beard, and colored her hair with gray paint she had bought at a costume shop.

From Slate ● Nov. 15, 2025

While sharing their memory-keeping mothers’ pasted pages and nostalgic ethos, these journals have broken family tradition with their messy aesthetic and preference for oft-discarded objects.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2025

Meanwhile, the segment’s banner, pasted below both Conway and Watters, read, “Iconic hero movie to embrace pro-immigrant themes.”

From Salon ● Jul. 13, 2025

She nodded at the Psalm pasted on Lyddie’s loom.

From "Lyddie" by Katherine Paterson

A pasting at the hands of Paris Saint-Germain might have coloured their last European campaign but Inter got to that final by seeing off Bayern Munich and Barcelona in epic knockout ties.

From Barron's ● Feb. 24, 2026

This game is more about how Aston Villa respond to their defeat at Arsenal, because they took a bit of a pasting.

From BBC ● Jan. 2, 2026

The U.S. botched copying and pasting a relatively straightforward warship already in service in Europe.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 25, 2025

One described the work as boring, little more than copying and pasting bank account info between scammers and motorcades.

From Salon ● Jun. 26, 2025

There’s no sense in copying a sentence from every paragraph and pasting them together at the end.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker