degust

present singular third person degusts · participle present degusting · participle past degusted · past degusted

1. To taste carefully to fully appreciate something; to savour

   as the bird soars once more, the observer may see it [the fish] being slowly degusted.

   1904, F.T. Bullen, Creatures of the Sea: Being the Life Stories of Some Sea Beasts and Fishes, Religious Tract Society, page 409

   5 more examples

   If wine is to withdraw its most poetic countenance, the sun of the white dinner-cloth, a deity to be invoked by two or three, all fervent, hushing their talk, degusting tenderly and storing reminiscences &emdash; for a bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect — if wine is to desert us, go thy ways, old Jack! Now we begin to have compunctions, and look back at the brave bottles squandered upon dinner-parties, where the guests drank grossly, discussing politics the while, and even the schoolboy "took his whack," like liquorice water.

   1883, R.L. Stevenson, “Napa wine”, in The Silverado Squatters, Chatto and Windus, →ISBN, page 35f.

   The bread was passing stale the cheese a trifle hard the beer somewhat flat but the pair had never degusted a meal with more relish.

   1892, M. Betham-Edwards, A north-country comedy, J.B. Lippincott, page 17

   I began to tell him all the tale of the demons, at which relation, first of all, he cried "Pshaw!"... But after he had degusted the matter a little he bade me repeat it all again from the beginning...

   1895, O. Crawfurd, Chapman's Magazine of Fiction, volume 1, Chapman & Hall, page 269

   He took the bottle filled up his glass half full and degusted it, *en connoisseur*, and said it is good but mine at home is better, it is older

   1898, L. Menand, Autobiography and Recollections of Incidents Connected with Horticultural Affairs, page 78

   Sentiment, the inward working of emotion, does not issue in action, and so becomes mere sentimentality, to be lingered over, sipped, and degusted, for its own sake.

   1912, S.L. Wolff, The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction, Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page 4