Distaste is a mild dislike for something offensive. A look of distaste, distaste for the work, with evident distaste.
It is milder than disgust and more considered than dislike — distaste implies a judgement about what is proper. It nearly always takes for. Note distasteful, which describes the thing rather than the feeling; and that the dis- reverses taste in its old sense of liking.
1noundistasteA mild dislike for something offensive.
“She wrinkled her nose in distaste at the smell of the old cheese.”
distaste is a dislike.
Dis- plus taste, where taste means liking as well as flavour. Taste comes from Old French taster, to feel or try.
Proto-Indo-European
*teh₂g-
la-cla
taxo — to touch sharply
Vulgar Latin
*tastāre — to touch or feel
Old French
taster — to taste, touch or hit
Middle English
tasten
English
taste
English, today
distaste
Built from
From dis + taste. taste The verb is from Middle English tasten, borrowed from Old French taster (“to taste, touch or hit”), from unattested Vulgar Latin tastāre (“to touch or feel”), from taxitāre, an innovated form of la-cla taxo (“to touch sharply”), from tango (“to touch, to grasp”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European teh₂g-, which is assumed to have had the same meaning as tangere. The noun came from the verb, and the two conflated after English lost its infinitive suffix -en, though tasten was most likely already used nominatively (as a), similar to Modern English tasting. Almost fully native smack, from smac,smak,smacke, from smæc,smæċċ.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA