Flavored

How to spell flavored

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce flavored

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does flavored mean?

1. adjectiveHaving a particular taste added or imparted to it.
2. verbPast tense of flavor: gave a particular taste to a food or drink.

Flavored in a sentence

• adjective

  The coffee shop sells a lemon flavored syrup for cold drinks.

• verb

  The chef flavored the sauce with fresh basil and garlic.

• adjective

  She prefers naturally flavored water over sugary sodas.

• verb

  He flavored the broth with a hint of ginger before serving.

Where does flavored come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the American spelling of a word that reached English from Old French, where 'flaor' or 'flaur' meant a smell or scent rather than a taste. The Old French form is thought to descend from an unrecorded Vulgar Latin 'flator', a 'blowing' or 'puff', built on the Latin verb 'flare' meaning 'to blow', perhaps mingled with 'fragrare', 'to smell sweet'. English took the noun in the 1300s still meaning 'odour', and only around the 1600s did the sense slide from what the nose detects to what the tongue tastes. The verb 'to flavour' (and so the participle here) grew out of that noun, meaning to give something a particular taste. The American spelling drops the 'u' that British and Canadian writers keep in 'flavoured', a tidy nineteenth-century simplification associated with Noah Webster, and that missing 'u' is precisely the spelling point to fix in memory.

How the word is built

• flavor (taste, savour)
• -ed (past participle / adjective suffix)

British and American spelling

Flavored is the American spelling. British English spells it flavoured.