flavor

Etymology

From Middle English flavour meaning “smell, odour”, usually pleasing, borrowed from Old French flaour (“smell, odour”), from Vulgar Latin *flātor (“odour, that which blows”), from Latin flātor (“blower”), from flō, flāre (“to blow, puff”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleh₁- (“to blow”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰel- (“to make a loud noise”). Doublet of blow and bleat.

noun

1. The quality produced by the sensation of taste or, especially, of taste and smell in combined effect.
   The flavor of this apple pie is delicious.
2. A substance used to produce a taste. Flavoring.
   Flavor was added to the pudding.
3. A variety (of taste) attributed to an object.
   What flavor of bubble gum do you enjoy?
4. The characteristic quality of something.
   the flavor of an experience
5. (informal) A kind or type.
   Debian is one flavor of the Linux operating system.
6. (particle physics) One of the six types of quarks (top, bottom, strange, charmed, up, and down) or three types of leptons (electron, muon, and tauon).
7. (archaic) The quality produced by the sensation of smell; odour; fragrance.
   the flavor of a rose
   It was damp, it was not free from dry rot, there was a flavour of rats in it, and it was the gloomy victim of that indescribable decay which settles on all the work of man’s hands whenever it’s not turned to man’s account. 1859, Charles Dickens, The Haunted House

verb

1. (American spelling, transitive) To add flavoring to something.