taste

from WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)
taste
    n 1: the sensation that results when taste buds in the tongue
         and throat convey information about the chemical
         composition of a soluble stimulus; "the candy left him with
         a bad taste"; "the melon had a delicious taste" [syn:
         {taste}, {taste sensation}, {gustatory sensation}, {taste
         perception}, {gustatory perception}]
    2: a strong liking; "my own preference is for good literature";
       "the Irish have a penchant for blarney" [syn: {preference},
       {penchant}, {predilection}, {taste}]
    3: delicate discrimination (especially of aesthetic values);
       "arrogance and lack of taste contributed to his rapid
       success"; "to ask at that particular time was the ultimate in
       bad taste" [syn: {taste}, {appreciation}, {discernment},
       {perceptiveness}]
    4: a brief experience of something; "he got a taste of life on
       the wild side"; "she enjoyed her brief taste of independence"
    5: a small amount eaten or drunk; "take a taste--you'll like it"
       [syn: {taste}, {mouthful}]
    6: the faculty of distinguishing sweet, sour, bitter, and salty
       properties in the mouth; "his cold deprived him of his sense
       of taste" [syn: {taste}, {gustation}, {sense of taste},
       {gustatory modality}]
    7: a kind of sensing; distinguishing substances by means of the
       taste buds; "a wine tasting" [syn: {taste}, {tasting}]
    v 1: have flavor; taste of something [syn: {taste}, {savor},
         {savour}]
    2: perceive by the sense of taste; "Can you taste the garlic?"
    3: take a sample of; "Try these new crackers"; "Sample the
       regional dishes" [syn: {sample}, {try}, {try out}, {taste}]
    4: have a distinctive or characteristic taste; "This tastes of
       nutmeg" [syn: {smack}, {taste}]
    5: distinguish flavors; "We tasted wines last night"
    6: experience briefly; "The ex-slave tasted freedom shortly
       before she died"
    
from The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Taste \Taste\ (t[=a]st), v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Tasted}; p. pr. &
   vb. n. {Tasting}.] [OE. tasten to feel, to taste, OF. taster,
   F. tater to feel, to try by the touch, to try, to taste,
   (assumed) LL. taxitare, fr. L. taxare to touch sharply, to
   estimate. See {Tax}, v. t.]
   1. To try by the touch; to handle; as, to taste a bow. [Obs.]
      --Chapman.
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            Taste it well and stone thou shalt it find.
                                                  --Chaucer.
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   2. To try by the touch of the tongue; to perceive the relish
      or flavor of (anything) by taking a small quantity into a
      mouth. Also used figuratively.
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            When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water
            that was made wine.                   --John ii. 9.
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            When Commodus had once tasted human blood, he became
            incapable of pity or remorse.         --Gibbon.
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   3. To try by eating a little; to eat a small quantity of.
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            I tasted a little of this honey.      --1 Sam. xiv.
                                                  29.
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   4. To become acquainted with by actual trial; to essay; to
      experience; to undergo.
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            He . . . should taste death for every man. --Heb.
                                                  ii. 9.
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   5. To partake of; to participate in; -- usually with an
      implied sense of relish or pleasure.
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            Thou . . . wilt taste
            No pleasure, though in pleasure, solitary. --Milton.
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from The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Taste \Taste\, v. i.
   1. To try food with the mouth; to eat or drink a little only;
      to try the flavor of anything; as, to taste of each kind
      of wine.
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   2. To have a smack; to excite a particular sensation, by
      which the specific quality or flavor is distinguished; to
      have a particular quality or character; as, this water
      tastes brackish; the milk tastes of garlic.
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            Yea, every idle, nice, and wanton reason
            Shall to the king taste of this action. --Shak.
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   3. To take sparingly.
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            For age but tastes of pleasures, youth devours.
                                                  --Dryden.
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   4. To have perception, experience, or enjoyment; to partake;
      as, to taste of nature's bounty. --Waller.
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            The valiant never taste of death but once. --Shak.
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from The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Taste \Taste\, n.
   1. The act of tasting; gustation.
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   2. 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.
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   3. (Physiol.) The one of the five senses by which certain
      properties of bodies (called their taste, savor, flavor)
      are ascertained by contact with the organs of taste.
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   Note: Taste depends mainly on the contact of soluble matter
         with the terminal organs (connected with branches of
         the glossopharyngeal and other nerves) in the papillae
         on the surface of the tongue. The base of the tongue is
         considered most sensitive to bitter substances, the
         point to sweet and acid substances.
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   4. Intellectual relish; liking; fondness; -- formerly with
      of, now with for; as, he had no taste for study.
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            I have no taste
            Of popular applause.                  --Dryden.
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   5. 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-letters; critical judgment; discernment.
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   6. Manner, with respect to what is pleasing, refined, or in
      accordance with good usage; style; as, music composed in
      good taste; an epitaph in bad taste.
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   7. Essay; trial; experience; experiment. --Shak.
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   8. A small portion given as a specimen; a little piece tasted
      or eaten; a bit. --Bacon.
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   9. A kind of narrow and thin silk ribbon.
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   Syn: Savor; relish; flavor; sensibility; gout.

   Usage: {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 anything which deserves the name.
          An original sense of the beautiful is just as
          necessary to aesthetic 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."
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                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 active hand
                Imprints the secret bias of the soul.
                                                  --Akenside.
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   {Taste buds}, or {Taste goblets} (Anat.), the flask-shaped
      end organs of taste in the epithelium of the tongue. They
      are made up of modified epithelial cells arranged somewhat
      like leaves in a bud.
      [1913 Webster]
    
from Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003)
taste
 n.

   1. The quality in a program that tends to be inversely proportional to
   the number of features, hacks, and kluges programmed into it. Also
   tasty, tasteful, tastefulness. "This feature comes in N tasty
   flavors." Although tasty and flavorful are essentially synonyms, taste
   and {flavor} are not. Taste refers to sound judgment on the part of
   the creator; a program or feature can exhibit taste but cannot have
   taste. On the other hand, a feature can have {flavor}. Also, {flavor}
   has the additional meaning of `kind' or `variety' not shared by taste.
   The marked sense of {flavor} is more popular than taste, though both
   are widely used. See also {elegant}.

   2. Alt. sp. of {tayste}.
    
from The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
taste

   1. (primarily MIT) The quality of a program that tends to be
   inversely proportional to the number of features, hacks, and
   {kluges} it contains.  Taste refers to sound judgment on the
   part of the creator.  See also {elegant}, {flavour}.

   2. Alternative spelling of "{tayste}".

   [{Jargon File}]
    
from Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
359 Moby Thesaurus words for "taste":
      Atticism, affection, affinity, appetence, appetite, appreciate,
      appreciation, appreciation of differences, appreciativeness,
      apprehend, appropriateness, aroma, artistic judgment, assay,
      attribute, badge, bag, be aware of, be conscious of, be exposed to,
      be fond of, be partial to, be sensible of, be subjected to, bent,
      bias, bit, bite, brand, break bread, bring to test, cachet,
      canine appetite, cast, censoriousness, character, characteristic,
      chasteness, chastity, choosiness, chosen kind, chromesthesia,
      clarity, classicalism, classicism, clearness, color hearing,
      come up against, comeliness, comprehension, configuration, confirm,
      connoisseurship, conscientiousness, correctness, count calories,
      critical niceness, criticalness, crush, cultivation, cup of tea,
      cut, cut and try, dash, decorum, delicacy, delight in, design,
      desire, diet, differentia, differential, dignity, directness,
      discernment, discretion, discriminating taste, discriminatingness,
      discrimination, discriminativeness, disposition, distinction,
      distinctive feature, drop, drought, druthers, dryness, earmark,
      ease, eat, elegance, elegancy, emptiness, empty stomach, encounter,
      endure, enjoy, essay, examine, example, experience, experiment,
      fall to, fancy, fare, fashion, fastidiousness, favor, feature,
      feed, feel, feeling, felicitousness, felicity, figure, fine palate,
      finesse, finish, fittingness, five senses, flavor, flow,
      flowing periods, fluency, fondness, form, give a try,
      give a tryout, gleam, go through, good taste, grace, gracefulness,
      gracility, grain, gust, gusto, hallmark, have, have a go,
      have knowledge of, hear, hearing, heart, hint, hollow hunger,
      hunger, hungriness, idea, idiocrasy, idiosyncrasy, impress,
      impression, inclination, index, individualism, infatuation,
      intimation, judgement, judiciousness, keynote, know, labor under,
      leaning, lick, like, likes, liking, limpidity, lineaments,
      little bite, little smack, look, love, lucidity,
      making distinctions, manner, mannerism, mark, marking, meet,
      meet up with, meet with, meticulousness, mode, mold, morsel, motif,
      mouthful, naturalness, nature, neatness, niceness of distinction,
      nicety, nip, odor, palate, partake, partake of, partiality,
      particular choice, particularity, particularness, pass through,
      passion, pay, peculiarity, pellucidity, penchant, perceive,
      perception, perfectionism, personal choice, perspicuity, phonism,
      photism, piece, pinch, pitch in, plainness, play around with,
      polish, politeness, politesse, polydipsia, practice upon,
      preciseness, precisianism, precision, predilection, predisposition,
      preference, prejudice, prepossession, priggishness, proclivity,
      property, propriety, prove, prudishness, punctilio,
      punctiliousness, purism, puritanism, purity, put to trial, quality,
      quirk, receptor, refined discrimination, refined palate,
      refinement, relish, research, respond, respond to stimuli,
      restraint, road-test, run a sample, run up against, sample,
      sampling, sapidity, sapor, savor, scintilla, scrupulosity,
      scrupulousness, seal, see, seemliness, selectiveness, selectivity,
      sense, sense organ, senses, sensibility, sensillum, sensitivity,
      sensorium, sensory organ, shade, shadow, shake down, shape, sight,
      simplicity, singularity, sip, sixth sense, smack, smack the lips,
      smattering, smell, smoothness, soft, soupcon, spark, specialty,
      specimen, spend, sprinkling, stamp, stand under, stomach,
      straightforwardness, strictness, style, stylishness, substantiate,
      subtlety, suffer, suggestion, sup, suspicion, sustain, swallow,
      swatch, sweet tooth, synesthesia, tact, tactfulness, taint, take,
      tang, tapeworm, taste of, tastefulness, taster, tendency,
      terseness, test, thing, thirst, thirstiness, thought, tincture,
      tinge, token, tolerance, torment of Tantalus, touch, trace, trait,
      trick, trifle, try, try it on, try out, type, unaffectedness,
      undergo, understanding, validate, verify, weakness, whiff, wink,
      zest

    

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