savour
Pronunciation
  • IPA: /ˈseɪvə(ɹ)/
Noun

savour (plural savours)

  1. The specific taste or smell of something.
    • 1898, J. Meade Falkner, Moonfleet, Ch.5:
      He held out to me a bowl of steaming broth, that filled the room with a savour sweeter, ten thousand times, to me than every rose and lily of the world; yet would not let me drink it at a gulp, but made me sip it with a spoon like any baby.
    • 1914, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter I, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915, OCLC 40817384 ↗:
      Little disappointed, then, she turned attention to "Chat of the Social World," gossip which exercised potent fascination upon the girl's intelligence. She devoured with more avidity than she had her food those pretentiously phrased chronicles of the snobocracy […] distilling therefrom an acid envy that robbed her napoleon of all its savour.
  2. A distinctive sensation.
    • Why is not my life a continual joy, and the savour of heaven perpetually upon my spirit?
  3. Sense of smell; power to scent, or trace by scent.
    • beyond my savour
  4. Pleasure; appreciation; relish.
Translations Verb

savour (savours, present participle savouring; past and past participle savoured)

  1. (intransitive) To possess a particular taste or smell, or a distinctive quality.
    • c. 1601–1602, William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or VVhat You VVill”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act V, scene i]:
      This savours not much of distraction.
    • I have rejected everything that savours of party.
    • Begone, thou impudent wretch, to hell, thy proper place: thou art a despiser of my glorious majesty, and your frame of spirit savours of blasphemy.
  2. (transitive) To appreciate, enjoy or relish something.
  3. (transitive, archaic) To season.
    • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (modern translation)
      […] divers sorts of fish; some baked in bread, some broiled on the coals, some seethed, some in gravy savoured with spices, and all with condiments so cunning that it caused him delight.
Translations Translations


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