Forms: α. 4– flavor, 5 Sc. flewoure, 5– flavour. β. 6 Sc. fleoure, fleure, fleowre, fleware, -ere, 8 Sc. flaur. [app. an adoption of OF. flaur, fleiur, *flaor, fraor smell. The euphonic v of the α forms cannot be proved to have existed in OF. (the OF. form flaveur alleged by Roquefort being unauthenticated); the analogy of OF. emblaver for earlier emblaer, povoir (mod. pouvoir) for earlier pooir, is open to question. Possibly the word may have undergone assimilation to savour.
The OF. forms cited above are treated by Godef. as variants of flairor:—vulgar L. *frāg(r)ōrem (cf. It. fragore), f. frāgrāre (see FRAGRANT); but some scholars refer them to a Lat. type *flātōrem, f. flāt- ppl. stem of flāre to blow.
With regard to the use of -our or -or, see FAVOUR.]
1. A smell, odor. In mod. use with more limited sense (cf. 2): A more or less subtle admixture or accompanying trace of a particular odor; an olfactory suggestion of the presence of some particular ingredient; an aroma.
13[?]. E. E. Allit. P., A. 87.
| So frech flauoreȝ of fryteȝ were, | |
| As fode hit con me fayre refete. |
c. 1425. Wyntoun, Cron., IX. xxvi. 107.
| Of þat Rute þe kynd Flewoure, | |
| As Flouris havand, þat Sawoure | |
| He had. |
c. 1450. Henryson, Mor. Fab., 66.
| With that ane cadgear, with capill, and with creillis | |
| Come carpand furth: than lawrence culd him spy? | |
| The foxe the flewer off the fresche hering feillis, | |
| And to the volff he roundis priuely. |
1483. Caxton, Gold. Leg., 183/1. Whan his body was take out of the walle there came out of the graue a flauour like a smoke of frankencence smellyng so swete that alle the peple were gretely comforted therby.
1513. Douglas, Æneis, VII. ii. 134.
| Quhair, from the erth, in derne wentis heir and thair, | |
| Ane strang flewir thrawis wp in the air. |
1542. Boorde, Dyetary, viii. (1870), 246–7. Stand or syt a good waye of from the fyre, takyinge the flauour of it.
1568. Skeyne, The Pest (1860), 18. Fleure of stank or corrupt reueir, with all vther fylthy corruptioun.
1606. Birnie, Kirk-Buriall (1833), 26. Althogh once the vse was to bury at home in their house graue, yet, to avoyd the deads flewer, they were constrained to bury abroad.
1667. Dryden, State Innoc., III. i.
| The Myrtle, Orange, and the blushing Rose, | |
| With bending Heaps so nigh their Blooms disclose, | |
| Each seems to smell the Flavour which the other blows. |
1781. J. Moore, View Soc. It. (1790), I. xxiii. 266. The body of this holy person is inclosed in a sarcophagus, under an altar in the middle of the chapel, and is said to emit a very agreeable and refreshing flavour.
1843. G. P. R. James, Forest Days, ii. Bring the ale, I say—and spill a drop on the floor, to give a new flavour to the room.
1870. Dickens, E. Drood, iii. A monotonous, silent city, deriving an earthy flavour throughout from its Cathedral crypt, and so abounding in vestiges of monastic graves, that the Cloisterham children grow small salad in the dust of abbots and abbesses, and make dirt-pies of nuns and friars.
2. The element in the taste of a substance which depends on the cooperation of the sense of smell; a more or less subtle peculiarity of taste distinguishing a substance from others; a touch or slight admixture of a particular kind of taste; a savor.
Milton’s use of flavor in the first quot., where he apparently distinguishes it both from taste and smell, has given rise to a conjecture that the sense is that of L. flāvor yellowness (a correctly formed word, though without classical authority). Possibly a recollection of the text ‘Ne intaearis vinum quando flavescit’ (Prov. xxiii. 31) led Milton to use the word in what he may have imagined to be its etymological sense. But it is not certain that he did not mean it simply in sense 2.
[1671. Milton, Samson, 540.
| Chor. Desire of wine and all delicious drinks, | |
| Which many a famous Warriour overturns, | |
| Thou couldst repress, nor did the dancing Rubie | |
| Sparkling, out-pow’rd, the flavor, or the smell, | |
| Or taste that cheers the heart of Gods and men, | |
| Allure thee from the cool Crystalline stream.] |
1693. Congreve, Juvenal Sat., xi. 32.
| If brought from far, it [Fish and Fowl] very Dear has cost, | |
| It has a Flavour then, which pleases most, | |
| And he devours it with a greater gust. |
1712. Addison, Spect., No. 409, 19 June, ¶ 2. That Sensitive Taste, which gives us a Relish of every different Flavour that affects the Palate.
1745. P. Thomas, Jrnl. Anson’s Voy., 331. They have both red and white Wines; but the greatest Plenty of White, which, if kept two years, has much the Flavor of Canary.
1789. Mrs. Piozzi, Journ. France, II. 372. This [oak] smoke gives the peculiar flavour to that bacon which hangs from the roof, already fat with the produce of the same tree growing about these districts in a plenty not to be believed.
1846. J. Baxter, Libr. Pract. Agric. (ed. 4), II. 419. At the time of bottling, I have seldom observed the wine to have any very sensible flavour,—meaning, by flavour, that compound sensation of smell and taste which characterises the finer kinds of wines; but after remaining a year in bottle, a flavour resembling elder-flowers is strongly developed, mingled generally in a slight degree with that of prussic acid.
3. fig. (of 1 and 2). † a. ‘Fragrance’ (of renown) (obs.). b. An undefinable characteristic quality instinctively apprehended. c. Piquancy, zest.
c. 1449. Pecock, Repr., I. xvi. 90. He schulde thanne haue more thanke and reward at his laste comyng hoom to the King of blisse, and more noble flauour of digne fame among all the princis of the world and the worthi peeris of heuen.
1699. Pomfret, Poems (1724), 44.
| The soft Reflections on your sacred Love, | |
| Like sov’reign Antidotes, all Cares remove; | |
| Composing ev’ry Faculty to Rest, | |
| They leave a grateful Flavour in my Breast. |
1866. Carlyle, in Glasg. Weekly Her., 15 June (1883), 1/7. Happy is he (still more is she) who has got to know a Bad Book by the very flavour; and to fly from it (and from the base, vain, and unprofitable soul that wrote it) as from a thing requiring to be left at once to leeward!
1874. Mahaffy, Soc. Life Greece, viii. 244. A certain aristocratic flavour must have ever dwelt about the Athenian, and led to a general feeling of selectness and refinement.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), I. 338, Apology, Introduction. The statements of the Memorabilia (i. 2, iv. 8) respecting the trial and death of Socrates agree generally with Plato; but they have lost the flavour of Socratic irony in the narrative of Xenophon.
1876. Trevelyan, Macaulay, II. xiv. 399. The hospitality at Holly Lodge had about it a flavour of pleasant peculiarity.
4. = FLAVOURING 2.
1785. Trusler, Mod. Times, II. 82. Three fourths of the white wine drank in this kingdom are compositions put together here, and made palatable by a liquor they call flavour.
