What can cause tastes to change? Taste buds are constantly being replaced, so changes in health, nutrition, medications, hormones and age can all affect how they function, causing foods to taste bland or all the same, or leading to a metallic, sweet, chalky, blood-like or otherwise undesirable taste in the mouth.
republic - a form of government whose head of state is not a monarch; the head of state in a republic is usually a president. form of government, political system - the members of a social organization who are in power. Translations.
A common simplified definition of a republic is a government where the head of state is not a monarch. Montesquieu included both democracies, where all the people have a share in rule, and aristocracies or oligarchies, where only some of the people rule, as republican forms of government.