Other forms: pasted, pastes, pasting
Paste is a soft, thick mixture — thick enough to hold its shape, wet enough to spread. Toothpaste on a brush, tomato paste squeezed out of a tube.
The word covers food and glue alike: fish paste on toast, wallpaper paste in a bucket, flour and water mixed into a paste for sticking things at school. Cooking uses it constantly — curry paste, garlic paste, a paste of herbs and oil. As a verb it means to stick something down with glue, which is where computers got the word: you copy something and paste it, as if with glue. Recipes give you the standard instruction: mix to a smooth paste before adding any liquid.
1nounpasteA soft, thick mixture that spreads or sticks.
“Mix the powder with water to make a paste.”
2nounsavouryA savoury spread made from ground meat or fish.
“She spread fish paste on the bread.”
3verbglueTo stick something down with glue.
“He pasted the posters to the wall.”
4verbinsertTo insert text you have copied, on a computer.
“Copy the address and paste it into the box.”
Paste and pasta are the same word. Both come from Latin pasta, itself from Greek, and English took one form through French and the other straight from Italian.
Middle English
paste
English, today
paste
Built from
From Middle English paste. From Middle English paste, from Old French paste (modern pâte), from Latin pasta, from Ancient Greek παστά. a doublet of pasta. The verb is from the noun. Middle English - had pasten (“to make a paste of; bake in a pastry”), also from the noun; compare Latin pistō and Medieval Latin pastillātus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA