tasty

tasty — adjective

1. Food or drink that is tasty gives you a pleasant feeling when you eat or drink i

1.adjectiveA1
Definition

Food or drink that is tasty gives you a pleasant feeling when you eat or drink it, because it has a good flavour.

Example

The pasta sauce was so tasty that Ignacio asked for the recipe.

tasty + food noun (pasta sauce, soup, cake)

Aoi made a tasty soup with fresh vegetables from the market.

Common collocations
  • tasty food
  • tasty meal
  • tasty dish
  • tasty snack
  • tasty soup
  • tasty cake
Synonyms
  • delicious

    the most common and direct synonym; slightly more emphatic than tasty

  • flavourful

    focuses on having a rich, distinct flavour rather than simply being pleasant to eat

  • appetizing

    suggests the food looks or smells good enough to make you want to eat it

Antonyms

Grammar Patterns

tasty + noun (food/dish/meal)

be + tasty

Common Mistakes

This restaurant serves tasteful food.
This restaurant serves tasty food.
'tasteful' means showing good aesthetic judgment (e.g. tasteful decor), not having good flavour.

2. An informal way to describe a person who you think is very good-looking and who

2.adjectiveB2
Definition

An informal way to describe a person who you think is very good-looking and who makes you feel a strong physical attraction.

Example

Maeve laughed when Christopher joked that the lifeguard looked 'tasty'.

informal register: used in casual conversation

Sirin felt uncomfortable when a stranger at the bar called her 'tasty'.

Common collocations
  • look tasty
  • call someone tasty
  • describe someone as tasty
Synonyms
  • hot

    very informal slang for sexually attractive; more common and less objectifying than tasty

  • good-looking

    standard and neutral; can be used in any register without causing offence

Grammar Patterns

tasty + noun (person)

call/describe + someone + tasty

Usage Note

This sense is informal slang and can be considered rude or objectifying. It is best avoided in professional, formal, or unfamiliar social settings. Even among close friends, it may come across as disrespectful depending on the context.

Common Mistakes

That candidate was very tasty in the job interview.
That candidate was very impressive in the job interview.
using 'tasty' in a professional context sounds inappropriate and confusing.

Word family

Synonym discussion

Sense: adjective/1

All four words describe food that is pleasant to eat, but they differ in emphasis and register. Tasty is the most everyday, neutral word — it simply means the food has a good flavour. Delicious is slightly stronger and more enthusiastic; people often use it to show genuine enjoyment ("This cake is delicious!"). Flavourful focuses on the presence of rich, distinct tastes — especially in savoury dishes with herbs, spices, or sauces. Appetizing is about the visual or olfactory appeal: food that looks or smells good enough to stimulate your appetite, even before you taste it. For example, you might call a plate of roasted vegetables "appetizing" because of how it looks, then say they were "tasty" after eating them, and tell the cook they were "delicious" to show extra appreciation.

tasty ↗delicious ↗flavourfulappetizing

Common collocations

Adverbs

Phrases

  • look tasty
  • taste tasty
  • smell tasty

Etymology

LatinFrenchEnglish

Formed in English by adding the suffix '-y' (meaning 'having the quality of') to the noun 'taste'. 'Taste' came into Middle English from Old French 'tast', which traces back to Latin 'taxare' meaning 'to touch critically or evaluate'. The food sense of 'tasty' appeared in the early 1600s, and the slang sense for 'sexually attractive' developed much later, in the mid-1900s.