Sitting here reading a food review. It’s a food gift basket for Mom. Reviewer says that the food in their gift basket was “delicious and tasty”.
My Neurons sat up straight. Aren’t those the same?
No. I always thought of them as being closely related but displaying a difference of degrees. Tasty is a less enthusiastic embrace of something.
“How was the chicken?”
“It was tasty.”
That’s a thin endorsement to me. I’m hedging. Something was wrong with it but I’m trying to put a positive tag on it.
Delicious, however, is an unreserved endorsement.
“How was the chicken?”
“It was delicious.”
To me, if it’s delicious, I’m unabashedly pleased.
So they’re not literally the same to me but in this world, they probably could be said to be literally the same. But in no way I would ever describe something as tasty and delicious. It’s one or the other.
Michael Seidel, writer 
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