Liking, n.
1. The state of being pleasing; a suiting. See On liking, below. [Obs. or Prov. End.]
2. The state of being pleased with, or attracted toward, some thing or person; hence, inclination; desire; pleasure; preference; -- often with for, formerly with to; as, it is an amusement I have no liking for. If the human intellect hath once taken a liking to any doctrine, . . . it draws everything else into harmony with that doctrine, and to its support. Bacon.
3. Appearance; look; figure; state of body as to health or condition. [Archaic] I shall think the worse of fat men, as long as I have an eye to make difference of men's liking. Shak. Their young ones are in good liking. Job. xxxix. 4. On liking, on condition of being pleasing to or suiting; also, on condition of being pleased with; as, to hold a place of service on liking; to engage a servant on liking. [Obs. or Prov. Eng.] Would he be the degenerate scion of that royal line . . . to be a king on liking and on sufferance Hazlitt.
1 other Webster entry under this spelling
Liking, p. a.
Looking; appearing; as, better or worse liking. See Like, to look. [Obs.] Chaucer. Why should he see your faces worse liking than the children which are of your sort Dan. i. 10.
Shades of meaning
Fernald has no entry of its own for liking; he lists it under appetite, fancy, love.
Where he writes about it:
An emotional or personal fancy is a capricious liking formed with slight reason and no exercise of judgment, and liable to fade as lightly as it was formed. — from fancy
Love of articles of food is better expressed by liking, as love, in its full sense, expresses something spiritual and reciprocal, such as can have no place in connection with objects that minister merely to the senses. — from love