Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A taste and relish for good food.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To eat food in a gluttonous manner; to gorge; to make a pig of oneself.
  • noun gluttony

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English gromandise, gluttony, from Old French gormandise, from gormant, glutton.]

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Examples

  • I HAVE looked through various dictionaries for the word gourmandise and have found no translation that suited me.

    The physiology of taste; or Transcendental gastronomy. Illustrated by anecdotes of distinguished artists and statesmen of both continents by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. Translated from the last Paris edition by Fayette Robinson. 2004

  • I HAVE looked through various dictionaries for the word gourmandise and have found no translation that suited me.

    The Physiology of Taste 1755-1826 Brillat-Savarin 1790

  • The last holdover of the old way of thinking is the Catholic catechism, which keeps gluttony on its list of sins and indicates — by using the word gourmandise in the French version, and by defining sin in part as “a perverse attachment to certain goods” — that the original meaning of gluttony is to be understood.

    Hard to Swallow 2007

  • The last holdover of the old way of thinking is the Catholic catechism, which keeps gluttony on its list of sins and indicates — by using the word gourmandise in the French version, and by defining sin in part as “a perverse attachment to certain goods” — that the original meaning of gluttony is to be understood.

    Hard to Swallow 2007

  • The last holdover of the old way of thinking is the Catholic catechism, which keeps gluttony on its list of sins and indicates — by using the word gourmandise in the French version, and by defining sin in part as “a perverse attachment to certain goods” — that the original meaning of gluttony is to be understood.

    Hard to Swallow 2007

  • To distinguish semantically between "gourmandise" in its proper application ( "la gourmandise proprement dite") and the common understanding of "gourmandise" as gluttony one must partake in the gourmand's powers of discrimination — unlike the lexicographers, but quintessentially like Savarin, whose prose, in portraying the gourmand's enjoyment of his expertise, takes pleasure it itself.

    Economies of Excess in Brillat-Savarin, Balzac, and Baudelaire 2007

  • Her first book, Une gourmandise, has been translated into twelve languages.

    Muriel Barbery biography 2009

  • Before becoming a literary sensation in 2007, Barbery had published Une gourmandise (to be published in 2009 by Europa Editions), a novel that was awarded the Bacchus-Bsn Prize.

    An Interview with Muriel Barbery by Viviana Musumeci, April 15 2008 2010

  • "Ils ont oublié, complètement oublié, la gourmandise sociale, qui réunit l'élégance athénienne, le luxe romaine et la délicatesse française, qui dispose avec sagacité, fait exécuter savamment, savoure avec énergie, et juge avec profondeur [...]"

    Notes on 'Economies of Excess in Brillat-Savarin, Balzac, and Baudelaire' 2007

  • C n'est qu'une confusion perpetuelle de la gourmandise proprement dite avec la gloutonnerie et la voracité: d'où j'ai conclu que les lexicographes, quoique très-estimables d'ailleurs, ne sont pas de ces savants aimables qui embouchent avec grace une aile de perdrix au suprême pour l'arroser, le petit doigt en l'air, d'un verre de vin de Laffitte ou de clos Vougeout.

    Notes on 'Economies of Excess in Brillat-Savarin, Balzac, and Baudelaire' 2007

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  • She remembered Mrs. Melville clutching excitedly at her arm as she turned her face away from the west, where a tiny darkness of banked clouds had succeeded flames, round which little rounded golden cloudlets thronged like Cupids round a celestial bonfire, and crying in a tone of gourmandise, "I would go anywhere for a good sunset!"

    - Rebecca West, The Judge

    July 29, 2009