[Meaning someone] living a (?)refined life.[1] Also [sc. attested is the plural] a)/geustoi, [meaning those] lacking experience.[2]
[Something] "lacking taste"[3] has four meanings: either that which is lacking flavor as yet, but capable of being given flavor, like water -- for being inert it is capable of having flavor imparted to it; or that which is subject to the other senses, like sound; or that which has a small amount of taste, like the watery kinds of porridge; or that which has a bad taste, like poisons. And [it is] clear that the sense of taste partakes of some of these things and some not. And in the case of the other senses also these four significations are recognized. They say that [the distinction between] that which is drinkable and undrinkable [are] the beginnings of tasting. For the first distinction taste makes is between these things. For it is especially in moist conditions that even the flavor arising from a mixture of dry elements is recognizable; and just as a drink becomes drinkable through the admixture of good flavor, thus also it becomes undrinkable through the admixture of undrinkable flavor. But both, that is, both the drinkable and the undrinkable, [are] tastable. And the undrinkable [is] tastable not as a fulfillment of the sense of taste but as something destructive to it because of the awfulness of the flavor. But the drinkable [is tastable] as something that preserves and fulfills that which is tastable by nature. Therefore the drinkable and the undrinkable are the beginnings of what is tastable. And since that which is drinkable [is] moist, and moistness is perceivable by the sense of touch, thus moistness is touchable and that which has such a flavor is tastable. This is something common to the senses of touch and taste: in the case of touch it is one of the specific things that it senses; in the case of taste it is the stuff and the vehicle of the tastes.