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PlainSpell

flavor

/ˈfleɪvɚ/noun, verb

flavor is a noun meaning “The quality produced by the sensation of taste or, especially, of taste and smell in combined effect” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-L-A-V-O-R and has 2 syllables, and it appears 11 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of flavor is flavors.

What does flavor mean?

noun

  1. 1

    USThe quality produced by the sensation of taste or, especially, of taste and smell in combined effect.

    The flavor of this apple pie is delicious.

  2. 2

    USFlavoring, a substance used to produce a taste.

    Flavor was added to the pudding.

  3. 3

    USA variety (of taste) attributed to an object (food, candy, chewing gum, medicine, etc).

    What flavor of bubble gum do you most enjoy?

  4. 4

    USThe characteristic quality of something.

    the flavor of an experience

  5. 5

    USinformalA kind or type.

    Debian is one flavor of the Linux operating system.

  6. 6

    USslangStyle.

  7. 7

    USOne of the six types of quarks (top, bottom, strange, charmed, up, and down) or three types of leptons (electron, muon, and tauon).

  8. 8

    USarchaicThe quality produced by the sensation of smell; odour; fragrance.

    the flavor of a rose

verb

  1. 1

    USTo add flavoring to something.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce flavor?

  • UK /ˈfleɪvə/
  • US /ˈfleɪvɚ/
  • Australia /ˈflæɪvə/

Flavor has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-flavour.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vininn126-flavor.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of flavor

  • flavors plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • flavour UK
  • flavuh
  • flavoring participle, present
  • flavored participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is flavor?

Flavor appears 11 times per million words in written English, the 6,674th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Flavor in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchgoût, saveur (the quality produced by the sensation of taste), assaisonner (to add flavoring to something)
GermanGeschmack (the quality produced by the sensation of taste), würzen (to add flavoring to something), Geschmacksstoff, Geschmacksverstärker (a substance used to produce a taste)
Portuguesesabor, gosto (the quality produced by the sensation of taste), condimentar (to add flavoring to something), condimento (a substance used to produce a taste)
Spanishsabor, gusto, sazón (the quality produced by the sensation of taste), saborizar, condimentar (to add flavoring to something)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does flavor come from?

From Middle English flavour meaning “smell, odour”, usually pleasing, borrowed from Old French flaour (“smell, odour”) (cfr.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).