Gustatory is a member of a finite set of words that describe the senses with which we encounter our world, the other members being visual, aural, olfactory, and tactile. Like its peers, gustatory has its roots in Latin—in this case, the Latin word gustare, meaning "to taste." Gustare is a somewhat distant relative of several common English words, among them choose and disgust, but it is a direct ancestor of gustatory, gustation, meaning "the act or sensation of tasting," and degustation, meaning "the action or an instance of tasting especially in a series of small portions."