Also 6 flaver. [f. prec. sb.]
† 1. intr. To be odorous, savor, smell. Obs.
c. 1425. Wyntoun, Cron., VIII. viii. 15.
| Wyth Spycery welle savorand, | |
| And off kynd welle flevorand, | |
| Ðat ilke Hart than, as men sayd, | |
| Scho bawmyd. |
2. To give flavor, taste, or scent to; to season; in first quot. † to make to ‘smell’ warm.
1542. Boorde, Dyetary, viii. (1870), 248. Let your hosen be brushed within and without, and flauour the insyde of them agaynst the fyre; vse lynnen sockes or lynnen hosen next your legges.
1730–6. in Bailey (folio).
1830. M. Donovan, Dom. Econ., I. 23 Some of their wines were flavoured with a kind of pitch.
1873. Tristram, Moab, xiii. 241. The water only slightly flavoured our tea.
fig. 1883. S. C. Hall, Retrospect, I. 66. It is of a sea-captain, an ‘old salt,’ an example of the old school when oaths seasoned conversation and flavoured every third sentence that was uttered on board ship; when it was held to be an incontrovertible truth that ‘he who didn’t swear couldn’t fight.’
3. To try the flavor of; to taste. rare–1.
1823. Lamb, Lett. (1888), II. 87. Yours [cheese] is the delicatest, rainbow-hued, melting piece I ever flavoured.
