taste

Etymology

From Middle English tasten, borrowed from Old French taster, from assumed Vulgar Latin *tastāre, from assumed Vulgar Latin *taxitāre, a new iterative of Latin taxāre (“to touch sharply”), from tangere (“to touch”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *teh₂g-. Almost displaced native Middle English smaken, smakien (“to taste”) (from Old English smacian (“to taste”)), Middle English smecchen (“to taste, smack”) (from Old English smæċċan (“to taste”)) (whence Modern English smack), Middle English buriȝen (“to taste”) (from Old English byrigan, birian (“to taste”)).

noun

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.
   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. (countable and uncountable) 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. 1777, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal, II.i
   The huge square box, parquet-floored and high-ceilinged, had been arranged to display a suite of bedroom furniture designed and made in the halcyon days of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when modish taste was just due to go clean out of fashion for the best part of the next hundred years. 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 1, in The China Governess
5. Personal preference; liking; predilection.
   I have developed a taste for fine wine.
6. (figurative) A small amount of experience with something that gives a sense of its quality as a whole.
   Such anecdotes give one a taste of life on a trauma ward.
   I'm all out of luck / I'm all out of faith / I would give everything just for one taste / But everything's here, all out of place[…] 2007, KT Tunstall (lyrics and music), “Saving My Face”, in Drastic Fantastic
7. A kind of narrow and thin silk ribbon.

verb

1. (transitive) To sample the flavor of something orally.
2. (intransitive, copulative) To have a taste; to excite a particular sensation by which flavor is distinguished.
   The chicken tasted great, but the milk tasted like garlic.
3. (transitive) To identify (a flavor) by sampling something orally.
   I can definitely taste the marzipan in this cake.
4. (transitive, figurative) To experience.
   I tasted in her arms the delights of paradise.
   They had not yet tasted the sweetness of freedom.
   Cowards dye many times before their deaths, / The valiant neuer taſte of death but once: […] c. 1599, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Ivlivs Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies, London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, act II, scene ii, page 117, column 1
5. To take sparingly.
   1699, John Dryden, Epistle to John Drydenhttps://books.google.es/books?id=0fo_AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA147&dq=%22Age+but+%27%27%27tastes%27%27%27+of+pleasures,+youth+devours%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwihhoWhjrzqAhV9URUIHYdFCJw4ChDoATAAegQIBBAC#v=onepage&q=%22Age%20but%20tastes%20of%20pleasures%2C%20youth%20devours%22&f=false Age but tastes of pleasures, youth devours.
6. To try by eating a little; to eat a small quantity of.
7. (obsolete) To try by the touch; to handle.