Word.ws English Dictionary

umami

/uˈmɑːmi/

umami noun: one of the five basic tastes, the savory taste of foods such as seaweed, cured fish, aged cheeses and meats.

Noun

umami (uncountable)

  1. One of the five basic tastes, the savory taste of foods such as seaweed, cured fish, aged cheeses and meats.
    • Umami is the mysterious “fifth taste”—a flavour that has never seemed to fit into the existing categories of sweet, sour, salty and bitter. South-east Asian chefs have exploited it throughout history—it's an essential part of the taste of seaweed, among other things[…]2000 January 28, Oliver Burkeman, “Things that make you go yum”, in The Guardian, →ISSN, archived from the original on 30 May 2023
    • But we are, of course, sweaty, fleshy lady-animals – all fur and umami.2011, Caitlin Moran, How to be a Woman

umami meaning in Tamil, Pashto, Arabic and Malay

umami in Tamil

இனிப்பு, புளிப்பு

umami in Pashto

umami; a category of flavour of glutamates
اومامي umā́mi

umami in Arabic

one of the five basic tastes, savoriness
أُومَامِي ʔūmāmī

umami in Malay

one of the five basic tastes, savoriness
umami, gurih, berlauk
More languagesFewer languages
umami in Indonesian
gurih, umami
umami in Thai
รสอูมามิ, อูมามิ uu-maa-mí
umami in Vietnamese
ngọt thịt

Examples of umami in a sentence

  • Protons coming off of acids ping receptors for "sour." Sugars get received as "sweet." Bitter, salty, and the proteinaceous flavor umami all set off their own neural cascades.2018 May 16, Adam Rogers, “The Fundamental Nihilism of Yanny vs. Laurel”, in Wired, archived from the original on 12 Jul 2018:
  • I quickly realized that I have always been obsessed with umami; I just didn't know it.2019, Raquel Pelzel, Umami Bomb: 75 Vegetarian Recipes That Explode with Flavor, Workman Publishing, →ISBN, page 2:

Synonyms of umami

Origin of umami

From Japanese 旨味, うまみ (umami), from 旨い (umai, “delicious”) + み (-mi, “-ness”), which describes the quality of a pleasant, savory taste.

Words formed from umami

Phrases with umami

Words that rhyme with umami

3 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about umami

What does umami mean?
Umami means one of the five basic tastes, the savory taste of foods such as seaweed, cured fish, aged cheeses and meats.
What is umami in Tamil?
Umami in Tamil is இனிப்பு, புளிப்பு. See Umami meaning in Tamil.
How do you use umami in a sentence?
Protons coming off of acids ping receptors for "sour." Sugars get received as "sweet." Bitter, salty, and the proteinaceous flavor umami all set off their own neural cascades.
What part of speech is umami?
Umami is a noun.
How do you pronounce umami?
Umami is pronounced /uˈmɑːmi/.

Words near umami in the dictionary

  1. umagite
  2. Umali
  3. Umalis
  4. UMall
  5. Umalo
  6. umami
  7. umami bomb
  8. umami bombs
  9. umaminess
  10. Uman
  11. Umana

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: umami (page history and authors); umami (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); اومامي (Pashto) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-umami.ogg.

Cite this entry: “umami.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/umami. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.