Liberal Dictionary English Dictionary
noun
- something that gives flavor; a substance or preparation used to give a particular flavor to food or drink: vanilla flavoring.
noun
- taste, especially the distinctive taste of something as it is experienced in the mouth.
- a substance or extract that provides a particular taste; flavoring.
- the characteristic quality of a thing: He captured the flavor of the experience in his book.
- a particular quality noticeable in a thing: language with a strong nautical flavor.
- Physics. any of the six labels given to the distinct kinds of quark: up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top.
- Archaic. smell, odor, or aroma.
verb (used with object)
- to give flavor to (something).
1845, “thing that gives flavor,” verbal noun from flavor (v.). Middle English flauryng meant “perfume.”
c.1300, “a smell, odor” (usually a pleasing one), from Old French flaour “smell, odor,” from Vulgar Latin flator “odor,” literally “that which blows,” from Latin flator “blower,” from flare “to blow, puff,” which is cognate with Old English blawan (see blow (v.1)).
The same Vulgar Latin source produced Old Italian fiatore “a bad odor.” Sense of “taste, savor” is 1690s, perhaps 1670s; originally “the element in taste which depends on the sense of smell.” The -v- is perhaps from influence of savor.
- Any of six classifications of quark varieties, distinguished by mass and electric charge. The flavors have the names up, down, strange, charm, top, and bottom. Protons in atomic nuclei are composed of two up quarks and one down quark, while neutrons consist of one up quark and two down quarks. The flavor of a quark may be changed in interactions involving the weak force.