Part of Speech: Adjective Meaning: 1. Unpleasant, disagreeable,
not to someone's taste. 2. Objectionable, offensive. Notes:
There are two negative adjectives based on the noun taste that
should not be confused. Tasteless means "lacking in taste",
where taste can refer to physical taste or cultural taste, as a
tasteless dish or a tasteless dress. Today's word means
"disagreeable", as a distasteful but necessary duty. The adverb
for this adjective is distastefully and the noun,
distatefulness. In Play: Let us begin today with an example that
distinguishes the two words we sometimes confuse: "I find Barb
Dwyer's assertion that our clothes are tasteless very
distasteful." You may find something distasteful even though it
is pleasant if it is objectionable for some reason: "Ida Claire
finds kissing in public highly distasteful." (Especially if who
she kisses hasn't brushed their teeth.) Word History: It is hard
to believe that such an English-sounding word was borrowed from
Old French taster, from Vulgar Latin tas