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Glite Dictionary
🍷 Musty wine 😜 Playful or quirky
corky

corky

1 8.7
An unpleasant moldy taste in wine caused by a faulty cork
  • adjective
  • /ˈkɔrki/
  • Specialized
translation icon : corcho
  • She sent her glass back, complaining it tasted corky and unpleasant.

Examples

  • This wine tastes corky and unpleasant.

  • The sommelier recognized that the wine was corky and immediately brought a new bottle.

  • A corky aroma completely ruined what should have been an excellent vintage.

  • The corky flavor ruined the dinner.

  • The wine had a corky flavor that ruined the entire meal.

  • After taking a sip, she grimaced at the corky taste lingering in her mouth.

  • He quickly identified the corky aroma as a sign of a bad bottle.

Synonyms

corked
vscorky
  • Specialized
7.7

Wine that tastes wrong because the cork has gone bad

refers specifically to a musty taste caused by a faulty stopper

Antonyms

clean
∞ 1.0

Free from dirt or harmful things

fresh
778 1.0

Recently made or gathered food that is not spoiled

How Musty

tainted
4.5
corky
  • Specialized
1 8.7
musty
29 3.9
stale
54 1.1
fresh
778 1.0

Surface Forms

corky positive

Morphology

corky = cork (transparent) = cork + y

The adjective is directly formed from the noun 'cork' with the productive adjectival suffix '-y' meaning 'having the quality of or characterized by cork', which matches the wine-related sense.

Etymology

Corky comes from cork, the 'stopper' used in wine bottles, and it names the musty, unpleasant taste a wine gets when that stopper is faulty. So a 'corky' wine tastes spoiled by the cork.