flavour [LME] Originally flavour was associated with smell rather than taste, and meant ‘fragrance’. It comes from an Old French word which might be a combination of Latin flatus ‘blowing’ and foetor ‘unpleasant smell’. The ‘v’ seems to be from savour [ME], which comes from Latin sapere ‘to taste’ The current meaning of ‘a distinctive taste’ dates from the 17th century. In the 1930s American ice-cream parlours ran campaigns to promote a particular flavour of the month, giving us the phrase we use today to mean ‘something that is currently very popular’.