About
My place to write about encounters in the fray of life.
With this blog it is my intention to provide li’l morsels and tit-bits that I find engaging and stimulating: perhaps you’ll will find something of interest here as well. I’ve re-opened this blog to remind myself that life is to be tasted and savoured – and is often all the better when shared with others.
The word “sapid” is defined as:
adj. having a strong, pleasant taste. ∎ (of talk or writing) pleasant or interesting.
”sapid.” The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English. 2009. Encyclopedia.com. 25 Mar. 2010 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.
From the Latin sapere “to taste, perceive.” Interestingly, taste and knowledge have always been strongly connected. For as far back as the book of Genesis and the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Related words with the same Latin root are: sapient, savant, savor, and savvy. The antonym to sapid is insipid.
In English we talk about a person “having good taste.”
In classical Hebrew the word taam for taste also means something like discernment, or commonsense reasoning as in the following passage:
Psalm 119:66: ”Teach me good judgment (taam) and knowledge: for I have believed thy commandments.”
Which indicates that the only true way to know is to taste or experience because in a latter verse:
Psalm 119:71: “It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes.”
The writer suggests that true learning comes about from tasting the consequences.
Pamphlets come out; printed Satires, bound or in broadside; — sapid, exhilarative, for a season, and interesting to the idle mind.— History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 16
