gormandize

American  

[gawr-muhn-dahyz, gawr-muhn-deez] / ˈgɔr mənˌdaɪz, ˌgɔr mənˈdiz /

especially British, gormandise

verb (used with or without object)

gormandized, gormandizing

1. to eat greedily or ravenously.

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noun

1. gourmandise.

gormandize British  

verb

1. to eat (food) greedily and voraciously

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noun

1. a less common variant of gourmandise

Other Word Forms

• gormandizer
  noun

Etymology

Origin of gormandize

1540–50; < French gourmandise (noun), equivalent to Middle French gourmand gourmand + -ise noun suffix later taken as v. suffix -ize

Explanation

To gormandize is to eat lots and lots of really tasty food. If your idea of a perfect night out is an enormous meal at a fancy restaurant, then you love to gormandize. Although gormandize comes from the Middle French word gourmand, it's not related to the similar-looking gourmet. While a gourmet is someone who enjoys fine food, a person who tends to gormandize also loves delicious fare, but puts the emphasis on quantity. So a few bites of sashimi or foie gras might make you a gourmet, but eating them until you feel sick is gormandizing.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

gormandize gormandized gormandizing

Hawaiian oranges were delicious, although "I seldom eat more than 10 or 15 at a sitting, however, because I despise to see anybody gormandize."

From Time Magazine Archive

Singers also are proverbially prone to gormandize; and though the Bird of Paradise unfortunately possessed the smallest mouth in all Singingland, it is astonishing how she pecked!

From Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 4 by Mabie, Hamilton Wright

What title to gormandize over the butcher's fat joints, and the baker's quartern loaves, if they who furnish them are left to gnaw bones, and live upon crumbs?

From The Wanderer (Volume 2 of 5) or, Female Difficulties by Burney, Fanny

Indeed, very frequently when he did not get permission to gormandize, this naughty glutton helped himself without leave.

From Holiday House A Series of Tales by Sinclair, Catherine

Their power to gormandize seems unlimited, and the number of insects they can swallow without protest is almost incredible.

From The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young by Morley, Margaret Warner

But Rose shopped and gormandized and enjoyed her healthy animal life.

From The Lost Lady of Lone by Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte

At that time he preferred serving food to being a viand for those who gormandized oddities.

From An Apostate: Nawin of Thais by Sills, Steven (Steven David Justin)

He never drank to excess, nor gormandized, nor gambled, nor even smoked, nor in any other way wasted the vitality needed for a long and tough grapple with adverse fortune.

From Famous Americans of Recent Times by Parton, James

In that stronghold of gluttony, he gormandized more than ever, and, being unable to talk it off his stomach, as in other cities, had apoplexy, and died.

From A Simpleton by Reade, Charles

The signoras and signorinas fell upon them and gormandized; but the signors eyed them with reasonable suspicion.

From The Cloister and the Hearth by Reade, Charles

The author of this hedonistic, gormandizing prayer is a Christian clergyman of serene faith.

From Time Magazine Archive

The gormandizing contest ended as it began, with songs and dances; in the latter amusement, however, few were now able to join; afterwards ensued a rude attempt at dramatic representation.

From Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory Volume I. by M'lean, John

"Yet the prohibition has produced good results, because it has set a limit to gormandizing."

From The Jew by Kraszewski, Jo?zef Ignacy

The Knights of the Toast were an associated group. The gridiron is a symbol both of gormandizing and of the roasting of Saint Lawrence.

From A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) [and] Pudding and Dumpling Burnt to Pot. Or a Compleat Key to the Dissertation on Dumpling (1727) by Macey, Samuel L.

The bourgeoisie were gormandizing on the solemn ruins of the Church which had become a place of rendez-vous, a mass of rubbish, soiled by petty puns and scandalous jests.

From Against the Grain by Huysmans, J.-K. (Joris-Karl)