paste

American  

[payst] / 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

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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

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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

Sold as powder, extract, paste, or frozen puree, ube is easily mixed into coffee, pastries, ice cream, spreads and even make-up.

From Barron's ● Oct. 6, 2026

Unfortunately, anyone can paste a USB-like graphic on a product listing online, he says.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 13, 2026

A Plaid MS, Carrie Harper, called it a "copy and paste opinion piece".

From BBC ● Jul. 6, 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

For $25, it tasted like tomato paste diluted in water.

From "When Dimple Met Rishi" by Sandhya Menon

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

From Slate ● May 15, 2026

"In Korea, the real foundation of our food is jang," he says, referring to fermented pastes and sauces such as doenjang, ganjang and gochujang.

From BBC ● Dec. 13, 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

The researchers used simple fluids for this research, but the approach could be expanded to include more complex fluids, such as liquid polymers, pastes and various types of foods.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 31, 2023

She pastes a kind expression on her face.

From "The Queen of Water" by Laura Resau

At an army base in the Nepali town of Bidur, a key rescue hub, relatives crowded around lists of rescued people pasted on a wall.

From Barron's ● Aug. 29, 2026

Alexandra Parfitt, 46, a biostatistician, was disappointed to discover her 9-year-old daughter had copied and pasted an internet description of a “Peanuts” cartoon character into a school presentation on Google Slides.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 21, 2026

On Monday at the Nottingham Inquiry, mental health nurse Busayo Ajewole admitted her notes were at times lacking information, copied and pasted and fundamentally wrong.

From BBC ● Apr. 27, 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

The smile remained, but now it seemed pasted on.

From "Ella Enchanted" by Gail Carson Levine

Workers at the Pyroshine factory were now busy pasting wolf-themed packaging onto boxes to be shipped to the United States.

From Barron's ● Feb. 13, 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

Some are nicknamed jumping genes because they literally jump around, copying and pasting themselves into different parts of our genome just as if they were still viral invaders.

From Salon ● Jun. 1, 2025

She quickly flushed the reddened paper towels, hoping they wouldn’t clog the toilet, then hurried down to the kitchen, pasting a smile over the anxiety she was feeling.

From "Pet" by Akwaeke Emezi

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