An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/schmecken

by Friedrich Kluge

schmecken, verb, ‘to taste, savour, relish,’ from Middle High German smęcken, smacken, ‘to try by tasting; savour, smell, scent; perceive’; the meaning ‘to smell’ is still partly retained by Alemannian and Bavarian Old High German smęcchen, only ‘to taste’ (transitive and intransitive), smacchên, ‘to smack of.’ Compare Old High German and Middle High German smac, masculine, ‘taste,’ Dutch smaak, Anglo-Saxon smœc (cc), ‘taste,’ smeččan, ‘to taste,’ English smack, verb and substantive. In Old Icelandic and Gothic there are no corresponding verbs from the Teutonic root smak (pre-Teutonic smā̆g), with which Lithuanian smagùs, ‘agreeable,’ literally ‘pliant,’ has wrongly been connected as cognate terms.