The tongue can distinguish five separate tastes: sweet, salt, sour (or acid), bitter, and savoury (sometimes called umami, from the Japanese word for a savoury flavour), due to stimulation of the taste buds. The overall taste or flavour of foods is due to these tastes, together with astringency in the mouth, texture, and aroma.
To eat, drink, or bite a product; to distinguish the four gustatory qualities of food, e.g., sweet, salt, sour or bitter.
Back in the thirteenth century, you tasted not with your tongue but with your fingers: the word taste originally meant to touch or to feel, and it did not completely lose this sense until the mid seventeenth century. At the same time, beginning in the late fourteenth century, the word taste slowly came to mean a special kind of “touching,” the kind that “feels” the flavour of a food as it passes over the tongue. Given the original meaning of taste, etymologists have tried to relate it to tangere, a Latin word meaning to touch: for example, it has been suggested that tangere was combined with gustare to form tastare, an unrecorded Latin word that might have developed into the English taste. If this is the origin of taste, then the word is a cousin of integer, which evolved from a negated form of tangere, one denoting a whole or “untouched” number. Alternatively, the source of taste may be the Latin taxare, meaning to feel out or to assess: according to this line of thinking, taxare gave rise to an unrecorded taxitare, which then developed into taste. If this latter explanation is the true one, then taste is a cousin of tax, a word that evolved directly from the Latin taxare. In the late fourteenth century, taste gave rise to taster, the name of a culinary officer whose job was to taste the food to ensure that it contained no poison before it was served to the royal family. Such tasters were also known as gusters and forestallers.
One of the five senses, where food or substances in the mouth are noticed through the tongue.
Sense that occurs in response to the contact of dissolved material with specialized nerve receptors (taste buds) on the tongue; the impulses are then transmitted to taste centers in the brain for interpretation. There are four basic tastes: bitter (detected mostly in the back of the tongue); sour (sides of the tongue); sweet, and salty (front of the tongue). All other tastes are a combination of these.
One of the five senses. Taste belongs to the body’s chemical sensing system. It is closely related to smell, for flavors are recognized mainly through the sense of smell. There are approximately 9,000 taste buds (tiny clusters of cells that sense flavors from foods) on the surface of the tongue. Taste buds in different parts of the tongue sense the four basic tastes: salty, sweet, bitter, and sour.
The sense for the appreciation of the flavor of substances in the mouth. The sense organs responsible are the taste buds on the surface of the tongue, which are stimulated when food dissolves in the saliva in the mouth. It is generally held that there are four basic taste sensations: sweet, bitter, sour, and salt, but two others, alkaline and metallic, are sometimes added to this list.
To attempt to determine the flavor of a substance by touching it with the tongue.
One of the five primary senses, taste is capable of discerning sweet, salty, sour, and bitter flavors. When combined with the sense of smell, a wide array of distinct flavors can be perceived. A fifth taste sensation, umami, has also been identified. Structures known as taste buds are responsible for detecting these tastes.
A feeling created by activating the taste buds on the tongue. Only three fundamental tastes are acknowledged—sweet, sour, and salty—with all other flavors stemming from combinations of these primary sensations.