Source : Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Taste \Taste\, n.
   1. The act of tasting; gustation.

   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.

   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.

   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
         papill[ae] 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.

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

            I have no taste Of popular applause.  --Dryden.

   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
      tastted of eaten; a bit. --Bacon.

   9. A kind of narrow and thin silk ribbon.

   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 [ae]sthetic judgments, as a sense of
          right and wrong to the formation of any just
          conclusions or 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.