[1] : The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

taste \taste\, n.
   1. the act of tasting; gustation.
      1913 webster

   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.
      1913 webster

   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.
      1913 webster

   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.
         1913 webster

   4. intellectual relish; liking; fondness; -- formerly with
      of, now with for; as, he had no taste for study.
      1913 webster

            i have no taste
            of popular applause.                  --dryden.
      1913 webster

   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.
      1913 webster

   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.
      1913 webster

   7. essay; trial; experience; experiment. --shak.
      1913 webster

   8. a small portion given as a specimen; a little piece tasted
      or eaten; a bit. --bacon.
      1913 webster

   9. a kind of narrow and thin silk ribbon.
      1913 webster

   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."
          1913 webster

                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.
          1913 webster

   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
see also:
taste sensibility judgment taste buds taste goblets 

Taste >> T Words
Taste, definition of term: Taste
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Sense Of Taste >> S Words
Sense Of Taste, definition of term: Sense Of Taste
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