From an old verb *gart (“to heat, to grow hot”) ( > “to steam”; cf. garot (“to steam”)), from the same stem as gars (“spirit; vapor, steam”) and gards (“delicious”) (q.v.), with an extra suffix -tya: *gar-tya- > garša. The original meaning was probably “steaming, steam,” from which “sharp, pungent smell, (smoke) stink” (a meaning still attested in the 1870's) > “sharp, hot taste” > “taste (in general).” Only by the end of the 19th century was this word's meaning restricted to “taste” alone. (A minority opinion suggests that garša is actually derived from gards (“delicious”), with an unexpected š instead of the regular ž (< *d) because of the influence of the variant smarša of smarža (“smell, odor”).)