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taste

[ teyst ]
/ teɪst /
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See synonyms for: taste / tasted / tasting on Thesaurus.com

verb (used with object), tast·ed, tast·ing.
verb (used without object), tast·ed, tast·ing.
noun
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Idioms about taste

    taste blood. blood (def. 24).
    to one's taste, agreeable or pleasing to one: He couldn't find any ties that were completely to his taste.

Origin of taste

First recorded in 1250–1300; (verb) Middle English tasten “to touch, taste,” from Old French taster “to touch, explore by touching” (Middle French: “to touch, taste”); cognate with Italian tastare, Provençal, Old Spanish tastar, of uncertain origin; (noun) Middle English tast “sense of touch, a trying, tasting,” from Old French, derivative of taster

synonym study for taste

17. Taste, flavor, savor refer to a quality that is perceived when a substance is placed upon the tongue. Taste is the general word: the taste of roast beef. Flavor is a characteristic taste, usually of a pleasing kind, and as of some ingredient put into the food: lemon flavor. Savor, much less common than taste or flavor, implies pleasing scent as well as taste or flavor, and connotes enjoyment in tasting: The sauce has an excellent savor.

historical usage of taste

The English noun taste (Middle English tast ) is derived from the Middle English verb tasten “to taste (food, medicine), perceive a flavor, palpate or feel (a patient), experience or feel something (also referring to sexual feeling), test someone or something, attempt.”
Tasten was borrowed from Old French taster “to touch, try,” from an unrecorded Vulgar Latin verb tastāre (or taxtāre or taxitāre ), which is most likely an alteration of a frequentative verb formed from tangere “to touch, tap, taste (food), lay hands on, affect (with emotion), seize, defraud.” (A frequentative verb is one that expresses repetition of an action).
Though the meaning “to try or examine by touch; to feel” is now obsolete, the current figurative meaning “to have a slight experience of something” has developed from that literal use. And of course the primary meaning “to try the flavor of something” is merely referring to another one of our five senses that is stimulated by food taken into the mouth.

OTHER WORDS FROM taste

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use taste in a sentence

British Dictionary definitions for taste

taste
/ (teɪst) /

noun
verb

Derived forms of taste

tastable, adjective

Word Origin for taste

C13: from Old French taster, ultimately from Latin taxāre to appraise
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Idioms and Phrases with taste

taste

see acquired taste; dose (taste) of one's own medicine; leave a bad taste in one's mouth; no accounting for tastes; poor taste.

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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