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

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

The sites are dubbed "pink slime" after the fluorescent pink meat paste used as an additive by food manufacturers.

From Barron's ● Sep. 28, 2026

Pesto is made here with basil, extra virgin olive oil, pine nuts, garlic and grated cheese, all ground to a thick paste.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 23, 2026

The vegetables should become deeply soft and jammy while retaining a little texture; you are not trying to cook them into a completely smooth paste.

From Salon ● Aug. 16, 2026

Other descriptions have included it being like a mix of anchovy paste and high-strength cod liver oil.

From BBC ● Aug. 3, 2026

It’s like paste from a can, not with real berries, which is good.

From "Free Lunch" by Rex Ogle

"It's our most traditional dish here in Pachuca. If you don't have much time, there's always a pastes store around the corner," Hernandez says.

From BBC ● Jun. 2, 2026

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

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

He also had many different ointments, lotions, syrups, and pastes all made out of onion juice and different parts of the onion plant.

From "Holes" by Louis Sachar

"It was pasted on a chest that was floating," said Rimal, 44.

From Barron's ● Aug. 30, 2026

The report highlighted an example of a junior software engineer, Robin, who pasted thousands of lines of AI-generated code before going to bed.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 12, 2026

Stern sent copy and pasted text of an ABC News article dated 2 October 2009 to Epstein titled Duchess of Debt?

From BBC ● Feb. 1, 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

Each year at the New Year Wang Lung’s father bought sheets of red paper and carefully cut and pasted new robes for the pair.

From "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck

Tired_Thumb looked up the name on a public records search website and shared the agent’s phone number in a comment, pasting the link to their source seconds later.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 4, 2026

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

There is hope in senior circles that the review, together with big infrastructure plans, can be used to create a summer of good news, after many months of taking a pasting.

From BBC ● May 24, 2025

Yet, he’s pathetic at maintaining order, pasting a misspelled sign on his police car that reads: Your being manipulated.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 18, 2025

My mother said she used a laundry iron to flatten it out before pasting it next to hers in the scrapbook.

From "Flush" by Carl Hiaasen