Gustatory Description

Gustatory. Interestingly, “gustatory” has nothing to do with wind force. It comes from the Latin word gustare meaning “to taste,” a root word that it shares in common with words like “disgust.” In terms of rhetorical modes, a gustatory description is any description concerned with how something tastes. These descriptions are not limited to cheeseburgers, and actually have many uses across written media.

Definition and Purpose of Gustatory Description

A gustatory description, which describes how something tastes, is used to engage the reader’s memories and emotions. Like with any of the five modes of sensory description, the gustatory description is just one way to thus engage the reader.

Be careful not to confuse taste words with smell, touch, and even sound words. Think about the word “sweet,” which can also be used to describe the way something smells or sounds. A gustatory description is about how something tastes, not how it smells or sounds.

How to Identify a Gustatory Description

A gustatory description is concerned with how something tastes. To be sure a description is gustatory, keep an eye out for the key verb “to taste” and also look for context clues.

In simple uses of gustatory description, the context will be someone eating or drinking something.

A gustatory description can be used any other time a character tastes something with their tongue as well.

You can use context clues to understand a description’s subtext as well. Use this to identify a gustatory description’s deeper meaning, if one is present.

In this example, the cake isn’t actually sweeter than any other year. What makes it sweeter for the character is that he has reached a landmark: age 80. The character’s age, which is the description's context, keys the reader into the symbolic significance of the cake.

Gustatory vs. Other Sensory Descriptions

Identify what senses are involved to know what kind of sensory description you are reading. Let’s look at an example:

Although the tongue might jump off the page as an indicator of a gustatory description, don’t be fooled. “Feeling” keys us into a tactile description (which involves feeling), and “heavy and dry” also key us into a tactile description because these things are felt by the tongue, not tasted by it. "My tongue felt heavy and dry" is a tactile description, not a gustatory description.

Objective Gustatory Description with Examples

Look for simple taste adjectives like “salty,” “sour,” and “sweet” to identify a gustatory description. Don’t ignore less common adjectives, either, such as “malty” and “fermented.” Even if a food is described as “without flavor,” that is a gustatory description because it involves the flavor (or lack of flavor) of the food.

Subjective Gustatory Description with Examples

A subjective gustatory description is opinionated. It is more interpretable than an objective gustatory description.

None of these examples contain verifiable, objective descriptions of taste. They are personal interpretations of taste, in other words, opinions.

Figurative Gustatory Description

A figurative gustatory description describes how something tastes by comparing it to something else. Either the subject is not tangible or the description is metaphorical.

Figurative Gustatory Descriptions of Ideas and Events

You will often encounter figurative gustatory descriptions. For instance, you probably recognize the expression, “taste the bitterness of defeat.” This expression is a figurative gustatory description, which compares an idea (defeat) to something bitter-tasting.

Figurative descriptions of this kind can also refer to things that happened.

Fig. 1 - The taste of battle

In this example, we are still discussing the bitterness of defeat, but in this case the “defeat” is not the abstract concept of defeat. In this example, an event tastes bitter. Here is another example.

Figurative Gustatory Descriptions Using Simile

These gustatory descriptions involve tasting real things, but the description of the taste is not literal. It can use simile or metaphor to describe the flavor.

This is an exceedingly common use of gustatory description because it is a super simple, common-sense way to narrow down the flavor of something when trying to communicate that flavor to another person. Describing something as “fruity” and “sweet” doesn’t say much, which is why often you will use a simile in order to be clearer:

The idea here is to tap into your reader’s memories of taste, and use that to describe something they may not be familiar with. Although no one is literally tasting a “subtle melon,” one can imagine that flavor. Again, these kinds of gustatory descriptions are very common.

Figurative Gustatory Descriptions of Ideas and Events Using Metaphor

The final kind of figurative description puts it all together and compares intangible things to the taste of something using metaphor.

Fig. 2 - The flavor of heartbreak.

This is about as far removed from actually tasting something that a gustatory description gets. In this final description, the ending of a relationship is compared to the flavor of something sour. Although the end of a relationship is not physically something you can taste, this remains an apt description because something sour is tangible, and that taste is likened to something else, even if that taste is vague or totally imagined.

In this example, the subject (the relationship) is not tasted, but it is compared to something that has its own unrelated (sour) flavor.

When to Use Gustatory Description

Depending on whether you are writing an essay or a creative story, you will use gustatory descriptions at different times.

Using Gustatory Description In An Essay

You will only use gustatory description in a few kinds of essays. First, you are unlikely to use objective gustatory description at all unless you are writing a descriptive essay, simply because they rarely qualify as evidence for a thesis. In a descriptive essay, all forms of sensory description are on the table.

In an essay with a thesis statement, you may find some use for figurative gustatory descriptions, but only in a very limited capacity. Here is an example:

Here, a figurative gustatory description acts as emotional shorthand to guide the reader along. It also acts as a confirmation for the reader, who might already feel a “bitter taste in their mouth” after reading the evidence. In this way, the description demonstrates to the reader that the writer understands these problems and agrees with the reader. The description gets everybody on the same page in a brief way.

Using Gustatory Description In A Creative Story

Only use gustatory descriptions to describe food and drink when it is important. In most stories, the way something tastes is of middling importance. Don’t spend too much time on the details, when the story or the characters could be developed.

Use gustatory descriptions for humor. Figurative gustatory descriptions, as well as figurative olfactory descriptions, can get a writer a lot of mileage when it comes to creative humor because they can be so surprising.

Use gustatory descriptions to capture the flavor of a moment. If you are struggling for a creative way to describe someone’s feelings about a moment or an event, try using a figurative gustatory description to capture its essence and connect the reader to the flavor or mood of your scene.