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.
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.
7. Essay; trial; experience; experiment. Shak.
8. A small portion given as a specimen; a little piece tasted or eaten; a bit. Bacon.
9. A kind of narrow and thin silk 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 anything which deserves the name. An original sense of the beautiful is just as necessary
to æsthetic 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 active hand
Imprints the secret bias of the soul.
Akenside. Taste of buds, or Taste of 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.
Tasteful
(Taste"ful) a.
1. Having a high relish; savory. "Tasteful herbs." Pope.
2. Having or exhibiting good taste; in accordance with good taste; tasty; as, a tasteful drapery.
— Taste"ful*ly, adv. — Taste"ful*ness, n.
Tasteless
(Taste"less), a.
1. Having no taste; insipid; flat; as, tasteless fruit.
2. Destitute of the sense of taste; or of good taste; as, a tasteless age. Orrery.
3. Not in accordance with good taste; as, a tasteless arrangement of drapery.
— Taste"less*ly, adv. — Taste"less*ness, n.
Taster
(Tast"er) n.
1. One who tastes; especially, one who first tastes food or drink to ascertain its quality.
Thy tutor be thy taster, ere thou eat.
Dryden. 2. That in which, or by which, anything is tasted, as, a dram cup, a cheese taster, or the like.
