taste

 When something goes into your mouth, you taste it. Tasting is not the same thing as eating. When you taste anything, you decide whether it’s good or not. The tongue is full of tiny nerves that send information about the food to the brain. The nose and other parts of the mouth are also involved when tasting something.

• This apple tastes sweet.
• Those oranges taste old.
• The bread we ate tasted very fresh.
• The mangoes in the store didn’t taste very good.

(Note: The word "taste" is a stative verb. Don’t use it in the continuous form when talking about flavor: The apple is tasting sweet.)

The word "taste" is also used as a noun:

• Thai food has an interesting and fresh taste.
• Do you like the taste of this?
• Kids usually don’t like the taste of broccoli.
• The fish left a strange taste in my mouth.
• I’ve never eaten that before. Can I have a taste?
• We had a taste for pizza, so we called for the delivery of three large pizzas with sausage and pepperoni. (To "have a taste" for something means that you crave it, you really want it.)

You can also use "taste" as a noun when describing a person’s ability to make good choices:

• She has very good taste in furniture.
• People who have good taste in clothing shop at that store.
• The joke he told was in very bad taste. He shouldn’t have said that.

He doesn’t like the way this tastes.

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This page was first published on September 3, 2012. It was updated on August 26, 2015.