I have never in my life heard it used like that—the closest is when Steve Jobs would discuss the overlap of aesthetics and product at Apple, bemoaning his competitors “had no taste”. All the written sources I find on websearch don’t seem to suggest that practical decision making is a common or a go-to meaning. Not being from the Bay Area or knowing anyone there though—maybe it is a localism?
The Wikipedia page for “good taste” redirects to Aesthetic taste with a big picture of Kant (the author of ‘the Critique of Judgement’ of which the first half is “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment”. This 4 year old Forbes article closely associates “taste” with aesthetics, particularly “beauty” and subjective measures which are no longer dictated by social class. This editorial in Town and Country magazine explores the classist/elitist ideas of “good taste”:
This more modern understanding of good taste as being completely arbitrary, meant merely to suppress whole classes of people in the service of a tiny elite, brings us back to Sitwell, Duchamp, and Dalí and their dismissals of good taste as being “the enemy of art”—something stifling rather than liberating.
And while language is a multifaceted and constantly evolving thing. The dictionaries and idiom lists seem to preclude anything that veers too far away from ideas of decorum and aesthetics:
1. An appropriate or acceptable amount of tact or discretion; a sense of what is proper or will not cause offense in a given social situation. 2. A refined, sophisticated ability to appreciate or make discerning judgments about artistic, aesthetic, or intellectual matters. good taste. (n.d.) Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. (2015). Retrieved June 23 2025 from https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/good+taste
Sounds completely normal to me? Maybe a Bay Area thing? But I feel like I’ve heard it from other people.
I have never in my life heard it used like that—the closest is when Steve Jobs would discuss the overlap of aesthetics and product at Apple, bemoaning his competitors “had no taste”. All the written sources I find on websearch don’t seem to suggest that practical decision making is a common or a go-to meaning. Not being from the Bay Area or knowing anyone there though—maybe it is a localism?
The Wikipedia page for “good taste” redirects to Aesthetic taste with a big picture of Kant (the author of ‘the Critique of Judgement’ of which the first half is “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment”. This 4 year old Forbes article closely associates “taste” with aesthetics, particularly “beauty” and subjective measures which are no longer dictated by social class. This editorial in Town and Country magazine explores the classist/elitist ideas of “good taste”:
And while language is a multifaceted and constantly evolving thing. The dictionaries and idiom lists seem to preclude anything that veers too far away from ideas of decorum and aesthetics:
1. An appropriate or acceptable amount of tact or discretion; a sense of what is proper or will not cause offense in a given social situation.
2. A refined, sophisticated ability to appreciate or make discerning judgments about artistic, aesthetic, or intellectual matters.
good taste. (n.d.) Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. (2015). Retrieved June 23 2025 from https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/good+taste
in good taste
idiom : proper and acceptable
“In good taste.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/in%20good%20taste. Accessed 23 Jun. 2025.