relish
/ˈɹɛlɪʃ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.32 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Particular quality; (countable) an instance of this; a characteristic or quality.
Obsolete; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Much pleasure we have lost while we abstained / From this delightful fruit, nor known till now / True relish, tasting."
- "The Caſe is the ſame if the Object, proper for exciting any Senſation, has never been apply'd to the Organ. A Laplander or Negro has no Notion of the reliſh of VVine."
- "I have a relish for moderate praise, because it bids fair to be judicious."
- "One of the first acts which he was under the necessity of performing must have been painful to a man of so generous a nature, and of so keen a relish for whatever was excellent in arts and letters."
- "[T]hat Air of piety to the Gods ſhould ſhine thro' the Poem, vvhich ſo viſibly appears in all the vvorks of antiquity: And it ought to preſerve ſome reliſh of the old vvay of vvriting; the connections ſhould be looeſ, the narrations and decſriptions ſhort, and the periods conciſe."
- "Jews and Israel are not synonymous; nor is support for Palestine synonymous with anti-Semitism; nor is questioning the orthodoxy of the Republican party, which the majority of us do with relish, an insult to Jewry."
Etymology
The noun is a variant of release (“(obsolete) odour, scent”), from Middle English reles, relese (“odour, scent; taste; efficacy, power”), probably from Anglo-Norman reles, relais, or Old French reles, relais (“that which is left behind, remainder, residue”), from relaisser, relaschier (“to liberate, release; to relax”) (modern French relâcher), from Latin relaxāre, the present active infinitive of relaxō (“to stretch out or widen again, loosen, slacken; (figurative) to ease, relax”), from re- (prefix meaning ‘again; back, backwards’) + laxō (“to release, undo; to relax”) (from laxus (“spacious, wide; loose, slack”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)leg- (“to slacken; to tire out”)) + -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs)). Doublet of release. The verb is derived from the noun.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈɹɛlɪʃ/
- British English: /ˈɹɛlɪʃ/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Food.
Inflected Forms
relishes (plural)
rellish (alternative)
relishes (present, singular)
relishing (participle, present)
relished (participle, past)
relished (past)
no-table-tags (table tags)
glossary (inflection template)
relished (first person, past)
relishest (archaic, present)
relished (past, second person)
relishedst (archaic, past)
Derived Forms
disrelish
relished
relishsome
relishy
unrelishness
relishable
relisher
relishing
unrelishable
unrelished