degust

English

Etymology

From French déguster.

Verb

degust (third-person singular simple present degusts, present participle degusting, simple past and past participle degusted)

  1. To taste carefully to fully appreciate something; to savour
    • 1883, R.L. Stevenson, “Napa wine”, in The Silverado Squatters, Chatto and Windus, →ISBN, page 35f.:
      If wine is to withdraw its most poetic countenance, the sun of the white dinner-cloth, a deity to be invoked by two or three, all fervent, hushing their talk, degusting tenderly and storing reminiscences &emdash; for a bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect — if wine is to desert us, go thy ways, old Jack! Now we begin to have compunctions, and look back at the brave bottles squandered upon dinner-parties, where the guests drank grossly, discussing politics the while, and even the schoolboy "took his whack," like liquorice water.
    • 1892, M. Betham-Edwards, A north-country comedy, J.B. Lippincott, page 17:
      The bread was passing stale the cheese a trifle hard the beer somewhat flat but the pair had never degusted a meal with more relish.
    • 1895, O. Crawfurd, Chapman's Magazine of Fiction, volume 1, Chapman & Hall, page 269:
      I began to tell him all the tale of the demons, at which relation, first of all, he cried "Pshaw!"... But after he had degusted the matter a little he bade me repeat it all again from the beginning...
    • 1898, L. Menand, Autobiography and Recollections of Incidents Connected with Horticultural Affairs, page 78:
      He took the bottle filled up his glass half full and degusted it, *en connoisseur*, and said it is good but mine at home is better, it is older
    • 1904, F.T. Bullen, Creatures of the Sea: Being the Life Stories of Some Sea Beasts and Fishes, Religious Tract Society, page 409:
      as the bird soars once more, the observer may see it [the fish] being slowly degusted.
    • 1912, S.L. Wolff, The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction, Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page 4:
      Sentiment, the inward working of emotion, does not issue in action, and so becomes mere sentimentality, to be lingered over, sipped, and degusted, for its own sake.
    • 2008, J. Hurt, S. Ehlers, “Introduction”, in The Complete Idiot's Guide to Cheeses of the World: A Tasteful Guide to Selecting, Serving, and Enjoying Cheese, DK Publishing, →ISBN, page 27:
      This book is meant to help you along in your own quest for cheese, and I hope that you do taste the cheeses that you read about. By the time you finish this book you should have degusted a lot of wonderful cheese.

Anagrams

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.