| 1. | taste, esp. the distinctive taste of something as it is experienced in the mouth. |
| 2. | a substance or extract that provides a particular taste; flavoring. |
| 3. | the characteristic quality of a thing: He captured the flavor of the experience in his book. |
| 4. | a particular quality noticeable in a thing: language with a strong nautical flavor. |
| 5. | Physics. any of the six labels given to the distinct kinds of quark: up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top. |
| 6. | Archaic. smell, odor, or aroma. |
| 7. | to give flavor to (something). |
fla·vor (flā'vər) n.
To give flavor to. [Middle English flavour, aroma, from Old French flaor, from Vulgar Latin *flātor, from Latin flāre, to blow; see bhlē- in Indo-European roots.] fla'vor·er n., fla'vor·less adj., fla'vor·ous (-əs), fla'vor·some (-səm) adj., fla'vor·y adj. |
| flavor (flā'vər) Pronunciation Key
Any of six classifications of quark varieties, distinguished by mass and electric charge. The flavors have the names up, down, strange, charm, top, and bottom. Protons in atomic nuclei are composed of two up quarks and one down quark, while neutrons consist of one up quark and two down quarks. The flavor of a quark may be changed in interactions involving the weak force. |
flavor spelling
US spelling of "flavour".
[The Jargon File]
(1997-03-18)
flavor
in particle physics, property that distinguishes different members in the two groups of basic building blocks of matter, the quarks and the leptons. There are six flavours of subatomic particle within each of these two groups: six leptons (the electron, the muon, the tau, the electron-neutrino, the muon-neutrino, and the tau-neutrino), and six quarks (designated up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom).
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