taste
/teɪst/
"taste" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“taste” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #1,924 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #1,924
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - One of the sensations produced by the tongue in response to certain chemicals; the quality of giving this sensation.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | taste |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /teɪst/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,924 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “taste” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for taste is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /teɪst/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,924 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for taste, with forms such as "atste", "taset", and "tasste". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "tat", "tse", "test", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English tasten, borrowed from Old French taster, from assumed Vulgar Latin *tastāre, from assumed Vulgar Latin *taxitāre, a new iterative of Latin taxāre (“to touch sharply”), from tangere (“to touch”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *teh₂g… The correct English form is taste, spelled T-A-S-T-E.
Definition
- 1One of the sensations produced by the tongue in response to certain chemicals; the quality of giving this sensation.
- 2The sense that consists in the perception and interpretation of this sensation.
- 3A small sample of food, drink, or recreational drugs.
- 4A person's implicit set of preferences, especially esthetic, though also culinary, sartorial, etc.
- 5Personal preference; liking; predilection.
- 6A small amount of experience with something that gives a sense of its quality as a whole.
- 7A kind of narrow and thin silk ribbon.
Etymology
From Middle English tasten, borrowed from Old French taster, from assumed Vulgar Latin *tastāre, from assumed Vulgar Latin *taxitāre, a new iterative of Latin taxāre (“to touch sharply”), from tangere (“to touch”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *teh₂g-. Almost displaced native Middle English smaken, smakien (“to taste”) (from Old English smacian (“to taste”)), Middle English smecchen (“to taste, smack”) (from Old English smæċċan (“to taste”)) (whence Modern English smack), Middle English buriȝen (“to taste”) (from Old English byrigan, birian (“to taste”)).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: atste,taset,tasste,tastte,tatse,ttaste
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of taste - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “taste”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is T-A-S-T-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /teɪst/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “tat” - see the side-by-side comparison. taste vs tat
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.