Word of the Day

: December 12, 2013

gustatory

adjective GUSS-tuh-tor-ee

What It Means

: relating to or associated with eating or the sense of taste

gustatory in Context

While a winter storm raged outside we enjoyed a series of gustatory delights prepared by our hosts.

"[Holly] Hughes' latest collection includes writing on every type of gustatory obsession from the farms and people who produce our ingredients to the chefs, traditions and home cooking that create the final, delicious product." - From a book review by Bobbi Booker in the Philadelphia Tribune, October 20, 2013

Did You Know?

"Gustatory" is a member of a finite set of words that describe the senses with which we encounter our world, the other members being "visual," "aural," "olfactory," and "tactile." Like its peers, "gustatory" has its roots in Latin-in this case the Latin word "gustare," meaning "to taste." "Gustare" is a somewhat distant relative of several common English words, among them "choose" and "disgust," but is a direct ancestor only of "gustatory," "gustation," meaning "the act or sensation of tasting," and "degustation," meaning "the action or an instance of tasting especially in a series of small portions."