Word study

Taste

4 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: taste, tasted, tastes, tasting. English often uses one word where Hebrew or Greek has several, each with its own shade of meaning. Under each word are verses where it is translated this way; choose the word itself for its full study: every verse, how else it is translated, the forms it takes and what the dictionaries say.

At a glance

How often each original word is translated “taste” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • טָעַם ṭâamtaste, perceivetranslated this way 9 times of its 10 uses · Strong’s H2938Verb  ·  Translated: taste 4, tasted 3, tastes 2, sees 1

    1 Samuel 14:24 Now the men of Israel were in distress that day, for Saul had placed the troops under an oath, saying, “Cursed is the man who eats any food before evening, before I have taken vengeance on my enemies.” So none of the troops tasted any food.

    2 Samuel 3:35 Then all the people came and urged David to eat something while it was still day, but David took an oath, saying, “May God punish me, and ever so severely, if I taste bread or anything else before the sun sets!”

    Full study and all 10 verses →
  • חֵךְ chêkpalate, roof of mouth, gumstranslated this way 3 times of its 18 uses · Strong’s H2441Noun  ·  Translated: mouth 7, taste 3

    Psalm 119:103 How sweet are Your words to my taste— sweeter than honey in my mouth!

    Proverbs 24:13 Eat honey, my son, for it is good, and the honeycomb is sweet to your taste.

    Full study and all 18 verses →
  • אָכַל âkaleattranslated this way 3 times of its 784 uses · Strong’s H398Verb  ·  Translated: eat 341, ate 64, eaten 63, consumed 39

    2 Kings 4:40 And they poured it out for the men to eat, but when they tasted the stew they cried out, “There is death in the pot, O man of God!” And they could not eat it.

    Job 21:25 Yet another man dies in the bitterness of his soul, having never tasted prosperity.

    Full study and all 696 verses →
  • טַעַם ṭaamtaste, judgementtranslated this way 2 times of its 12 uses · Strong’s H2940Noun  ·  Translated: tasted 2, discernment 2, flavor 2

    Exodus 16:31 Now the house of Israel called the bread manna. It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey.

    Numbers 11:8 The people walked around and gathered it, ground it on a handmill or crushed it in a mortar, then boiled it in a cooking pot or shaped it into cakes. It tasted like pastry baked with fine oil.

    Full study and all 12 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • γεύομαι geúomaiI taste, experiencetranslated this way 12 times of its 15 uses · Strong’s G1089Verb  ·  Translated: taste 6, tasted 4, eat 2, tasting 1

    Matthew 16:28 Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.”

    Mark 9:1 Then Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God arrive with power.”

    Full study and all 15 verses →
How to study a word well
  1. Start from the verse, not the dictionary. Find which Hebrew or Greek word stands in the verse you are studying. One English word often translates several different original words.
  2. Read every place the word is used. A word means what its writers used it to mean. The list of verses and the count by book show its range, and who uses it most.
  3. Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
  4. Notice the form. A command is not a statement, and a passive verb is something done to the subject. The form in your verse is part of the meaning.
  5. See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
  6. Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
  7. Come back to the verse. Context decides. A word does not carry every one of its meanings into every verse, and where a word came from does not settle what it means in a sentence written centuries later.

What the Bible says about taste: passages by topic →

Scripture text and translation counts: Berean Standard Bible. Full entry: Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906, public domain), in the digital edition Brown-Driver-Briggs Enhanced by unfoldingWord (Joel Ruark, J. de Joode), based on data by Eliran Wong and Stephen Ku; its additions are used under CC BY 4.0. Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary: Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible Project, CC BY 4.0. Hebrew-to-English verse numbering: original work of the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible available at https://github.com/openscriptures/morphhb, CC BY 4.0. We reformatted the data, linked the references to this site’s Bible text and left out words in other scripts that the source holds only as images. These are historical reference works; an entry gives its authors’ view, and a word’s meaning in any verse depends on how it is used there.