Your ShelfYour Projects
Webster's Dictionary (1865)

3 entries under this word

Taste

Tāste, v. t.

verbtransitive

v. t. [imp. & p. p. TASTED; p. pr. & vb. n. TASTING.] [O. Fr. taster, N. Fr. tâter, to feel, to try by the touch, to try, to taste, Pr. & O. Sp. tastar, It. tastare, Lat. as if taxitare, from taxare, to touch sharply, to estimate, verb intensive from tangere, to touch; D. & Ger. tasten, to touch, feel.]

Sense 1. To try by the touch; to handle. [Obs.]

He now began To taste the bow; the sharp shaft took, tugged hard. Chapman.

Sense 2. To try by the touch of the tongue; to perceive the relish or flavor of by taking a small quantity into the mouth.

The ruler of the feast tasted the water that was made wine. John ii. 9.

Sense 3. To try by eating a little; to eat a small quantity of.

I tasted a little of this honey. 1 Sam. xiv. 29.

Sense 4. To become acquainted with by actual trial; to essay; to experience; to undergo.

He, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man. Heb. ii. 9.

Sense 5. To partake of; to participate in;—usually with an implied sense of relish or pleasure.

Thou, Adam, wilt taste no pleasure. Milton.

When Commodus had once tasted human blood, he became incapable of pity or remorse. Gibbon.

Tāste, v. i.

verbintransitive

v. i. 1. To try food with the mouth; to eat or drink; to eat or drink a little only; to try the flavor of any thing; as, to taste of each kind of wine. 2. To have a smack; to excite a particular sensation, by which the quality or flavor is distinguished; to be tinctured; to have a particular quality or character;—followed by of; as, to taste of garlic. Every idle, nice, and wanton reason Shall, to the king, taste of this action. Shak. 3. To have perception, experience, or enjoyment; to partake. The valiant never taste of death but once. Shak. Of nature’s bounty men forbear to taste. Waller. 4. To enjoy sparingly. “For age but tastes of pleasures, youth devours.” Dryden.

Tāste, n.

noun

n. 1. The act of tasting; gustation.

  1. A particular sensation excited by the application of a substance to the tongue; the quality or savor of any substance as perceived by means of the tongue; flavor; as, the taste of an orange, or an apple; a bitter taste; an acid taste; a sweet taste.
  2. The sense by which the savor of bodies is ascertained by contact, and which has its principal seat in the tongue.
  3. Intellectual relish; as, he had no taste of true glory.

I have no taste Of popular applause. Dryden.

  1. Nice perception, or the power of perceiving and relishing excellence in human performances; the faculty of discerning beauty, order, congruity, proportion, symmetry, or whatever constitutes excellence, particularly in the fine arts and belles lettres; critical judgment; discernment.
  2. Manner, with respect to what is pleasing; style; as, music composed in good taste; an epitaph in bad taste.
  3. Essay; trial; experiment. [Obs.] Shak.
  4. A small portion given as a specimen; a little piece tasted or eaten; a bit. Bacon.
  5. A kind of narrow ribbon.

Syn.—Savor; relish; flavor; sensibility; gout.—TASTE, SENSIBILITY, JUDGMENT. Some consider taste as a mere sensibility, and others as a simple exercise of judgment; but a union of both is requisite to the existence of any thing which deserves the name. An original sense of the beautiful is just as necessary to esthetic judgments, as a sense of right and wrong to the formation of any just conclusions on moral subjects. But this “sense of the beautiful” is not an arbitrary principle. It is under the guidance of reason; it grows in delicacy and correctness with the progress of the individual and of society at large; it has its laws, which are seated in the nature of man; and it is in the development of these laws that we find the true “standard of taste.” What, then, is taste but those internal powers,   Active and strong, and feelingly alive   To each fine impulse? a discerning sense   Of decent and sublime, with quick disgust   From things deformed, or disarranged, or gross   In species? This, nor gems, nor stores of gold,   Nor purple state, nor culture, can bestow,   But God alone, when first his sacred hand   Imprints the secret bias of the soul. Akenside.