taste
Forms
- Plural
- tastes
- present (v1)
- taste
- past (v2)
- tasted
- past participle (v3)
- tasted
- present participle
- tasting
- 3rd person singular
- tastes
Definitions
1.One of the sensations produced by the tongue in response to certain chemicals; the quality of giving this sensation.
- He had a strange taste in his mouth.
- Like smell, taste has been found to imprint our minds with strong memories.
- Venison has a strong taste.
2.The sense that consists in the perception and interpretation of this sensation.
- His taste was impaired by an illness.
3.A small sample of food, drink, or recreational drugs.
4.A person's implicit set of preferences, especially esthetic, though also culinary, sartorial, etc.
- Dr. Parker has good taste in wine.
- That's very true indeed Sir Peter! after having married you I should never pretend to Taste again I allow.
1.To sample the flavor of something orally.
2.To identify (a flavor) by sampling something orally.
- I can definitely taste the marzipan in this cake.
3.To experience.
- I tasted in her arms the delights of paradise.
- They had not yet tasted the sweetness of freedom.
- Hopefully, Dux and Julie got to taste some of that good money, because after "No More," there was no more.
4.To have a taste; to excite a particular sensation by which flavor is distinguished.
- The chicken tasted great, but the milk tasted like garlic.
Frequency
Overall
Uncommon· #2198
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Rare
- General reading & writing
- Uncommon
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Rare
Etymology
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.