Thursday, July 17, 2008

gustatory

gustatory \GUS-tuh-tor-ee\, adjective:

Of or pertaining to the sense of taste.

In a land of ice and chains and endemic suffering, caviar provided gustatory salvation from grief and black days, a sensual escape from temporal woes.
-- Jeffrey Tayler, "The Caviar Thugs", The Atlantic, June 2001
Why . . . would something that provides such gustatory pleasure turn out to be supposedly the worst thing you could ever eat?
-- Richard Turner, "The Trendy Diet That Sizzles", Newsweek, September 6, 1999
Instead I seemed to be drawn to countries with the worst food imaginable, places like Turkistan and Africa, where every day you woke up hoping you could avoid gustatory terror but knowing that before you slept again, horrible things would be going inside your mouth. The best strategy was simply to try to eat as little as possible. But I seemed cursed by an ever hopeful palate. "Termites? Termite larva? Could be interesting. I'll try a handful." This was never a good idea.
-- Stuart Stevens, Feeding Frenzy

Gustatory derives from Latin gustatus, "taste," from gustare, "to taste, to take a little of." Other words that have the same root include disgust and gusto ("vigorous and enthusiastic enjoyment").

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