Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Highly pleasing or agreeable to the senses, especially of taste or smell.
- adj. Very pleasant; delightful: a delicious revenge.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Pleasing in the highest degree; most sweet or grateful to the senses; affording exquisite pleasure: as, a delicious viand; a delicious odor; delicious fruit or wine.
- Most pleasing to the mind; yielding exquisite delight; delightful.
- Delicate; luxurious; dainty; addicted to or seeking pleasure.
- Synonyms Delicious, Delightful, luscious, savory. Delicious is highly agreeable to some sense, generally that of taste, sometimes that of smell or of hearing. Delightful is highly agreeable to the mind; it is always supersensuous, except perhaps as sight or hearing is sometimes the immediate means to high mental pleasure. Delicious food, odors, music; delightful thoughts, hopes, anticipations, news.
Wiktionary
- adj. Pleasing to taste; tasty.
- adj. colloquial Metaphorically pleasing to taste; pleasing to the eyes or mind.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Affording exquisite pleasure; delightful; most sweet or grateful to the senses, especially to the taste; charming.
- adj. obsolete Addicted to pleasure; seeking enjoyment; luxurious; effeminate.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. extremely pleasing to the sense of taste
- n. variety of sweet eating apples
- adj. greatly pleasing or entertaining
Etymologies
- Middle English delicious, from Anglo-Norman delicious from Old French delicious, delicieus, from Late Latin dēliciōsus "delicate, delicious" from dēliciae "delights", plural of dēlicia "pleasure" from dēlicēre "to allure, entice," from de- "away" + lacēre "to lure, deceive". Displaced native Middle English este ("delicious, favorable") (from Old English ēste ("delicious, dainty, luxurious, delicate")), Middle English wunlic, wunli ("delicious, joyous") (from Old English wynlīċ ("pleasant, beatiful, joyful")), Old English ēstelīc ("delicious, delicate, dainty"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Anglo-Norman, from Late Latin dēliciōsus, pleasing, from Latin dēlicia, pleasure : dē-, intensive pref.; see de- + lacere, to entice. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Martin Ramin for The Wall Street Journal 2010 Saracco 2010 Saracco Moscato d'Asti, $16 The word "great" is rarely, if ever, applied to Moscato d'Asti, but the word "delicious" would not be amiss in describing this light, bright, slightly fizzy white with notes of pear and white flower from one of the best Moscato producers in Piedmont.”
The Wall Street Journal: Enjoying Good Wines With a Violin Great
“In this recipe, the chef elevates what he calls "delicious peasant food" with two Moroccan-inflected sauces: a lime-coriander yogurt and a tapenade made with dates and Lucques olives.”
The Wall Street Journal: Sardines with Olive-Date Tapenade and Yogurt
“Goldberg did serve as an informal adviser to Tripp during the months in which she was taping conversations with Lewinsky, and Goldberg relished hearing what she called the delicious "dish" about the president.”
“About “gravlax” which I called a delicious fermented salmon dish, something some of you Americans thought was funny:”
“He likes how she says the word "delicious," so she repeats it three times: "Delicious, delicious, delicious.”
“He resides near Jocotepec, Jalisco, in "delicious" remote mountainside privacy.”
“Sometimes I pick wines because they are just plain delicious, but it goes beyond that.”
“EW, your clips are delicious from a menu of mutton.”
“I am very much of the belief that a walk or a subway ride for something really delicious is alwasy worth it.”
“Or at least Long Island: the idea of Pamela Geller getting evicted and replaced by a Palestinian family has a certain delicious symmetry to it. feckless Says:”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘delicious’.
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Beautiful and Ugly
Beautiful, attractive, well-formed
Ugly, unattractive, malformedadorable, alluring, angelic, appealing, appetizing, attractive, beaming, beauteous, beautiful, becoming, beguiling, bewitching and 180 more...
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Describing the Taste of Foods
yummy, zesty, piquant, pungent, sharp, spicy, poignant, delicious, ambrosial, appetizing, delectable, heavenly and 194 more...
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Words to Describe The Taste of Food
This list seeks to address a pet annoyance of mine. It occurs when chefs, food critics and travel writers, usually on television, taste something that looks either delicious or unusual and then in...
unctuous, sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami, piquant, savory, tangy, luscious, delectable, brackish and 66 more...
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You are so GOOD LOOKING!
Words about looking good
a dish, dishy, snazzy, styling, looker, handsome, beautiful, delicious, dessert, yummy, tantalizing, hormone hunk and 55 more...
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'icious!
words common and fictitious ending in -icious and -itious
delicious, discolicious, droolicious, auspicious, cocoalicious, riddleicious, fictitious, vicious, tralatitious, superstitious, officious, receptitious and 23 more...
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Nice simple words
Simple words that are nice to say or use
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Adjectives for XKCD936-compliant pass...
A list of 2048 common English adjectives that could be used to create plausible, memorable random phrases.
I'm going to use this list in a password generator, inspired by big, small, happy, sad, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, near, far and 19 more... -
yummy
delectable words
literallydelectable, scrumptious, ambrosial, mouthwatering, piquant, juicy, luscious, heavenly, sapid, toothsome, succulent, savory and 10 more...
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Twitter favourites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
bumwank, calamity, recalcitrant, gayenese, jeeze, nonsense, flabbergasted, juxtapose, procrastinating, ossanity, biffing, loser and 1972 more... -
lunathemoon's list
This is for those words that sound slang, but are actually formal terms.
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Flutter
tuberose, golden apple, apple cider, unicorn, extraordinary, Pleiades, Merope, speckle, glitter, rose, pitter-pat, whale and 314 more...
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erich13's list
My Tag Cloud
addon, admire, adobeair, advice, alist, android, api, app, apple, augmentedreality, author, badge and 179 more...
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Apples to Apples: Green Cards
A complete list of the green cards (adjectives) from the popular word game.
absurd, addictive, adorable, aged, American, ancient, animated, annoying, appetizing, arrogant, awesome, awkward and 237 more...
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The Last Werewolf
This novel by Glen Duncan, aside from being a ripping yarn and beautifully written, is just littered with words that I had to look up and discover that often his use of the word not only fitted per...
gurns, bok, chimney breast, dichotomy, Platonic form, filthy, Platonic Form, mathematics, BAM, skirls, clarity, blundering and 298 more...
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yaleboy716's list
perspicacious, exonerate, capricious, dazzle, splendid, splendor, languorous, delicious, dapper, sartorial
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Rilakkuma's list
The Velvetine Ruffians
gamine, waif, ruffian, villain, rake, libertine, velvetine, luminary, nom de plume, street urchin, epicurean, eventide and 256 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for delicious.

Louises I lifted my face to the rain. The night air was delicious with the smell of damp woodland, streaked with the odors of wet tarmac, cordite, diesel and the seductive whiff of the motorcycle leathers. From "The Last Werewolf" by Glen Duncan.
Mar 27, 2012
arcadia YES! Ideas CAN be delicious. See my list "Picture THIS on your marquee" for examples. Dec 19, 2007
lampbane Penny Arcade (7/12/06):
"What does it mean to be delicious? Can something untasteable posess some flavor that is metatastual? Could, then, an idea be delicious?" Dec 6, 2007