savour

• savor (chiefly US)

• Rhymes: -eɪvə(r)

Borrowed from Old French savour, from Latin sapor (“taste, flavor”), from sapiō (“taste of, have a flavor of”).

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.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Richard Baxter

     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.
   • (Can we date this quote?) George Herbert

     beyond my savour

Borrowed from Old French savourer, from savour, or possibly Late Latin sapōrāre, present active infinitive of sapōrō, from sapor (“taste, flavor”), from sapiō (“taste of, have a flavor of”).

savour (third-person singular simple present savours, present participle savouring, simple past and past participle savoured)

1. (intransitive) To possess a particular taste or smell, or a distinctive quality.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Shakespeare

     This savours not much of distraction.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Addison

     I have rejected everything that savours of party.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Rev. Joseph Bellamy

     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.

• varous

From Latin sapor, sapōrem.

savour m (oblique plural savours, nominative singular savours, nominative plural savour)

1. taste

• For quotations of use of this term, see Citations:savour.

• savourer

• French: saveur