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

Its walls are thin and yielding, and may become unnaturally distended, as in the case of those who subsist on a bulky, innutritious diet, and of those who habitually gormandize.

From A Treatise on Physiology and Hygiene For Educational Institutions and General Readers by Hutchison, Joseph Chrisman

The first day among the hills was spent like the first one on shore—without food, although they had so gormandized themselves on the preceding evening that they were able to stand this privation much better.

From Adrift in the Wilds or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys by Ellis, Edward Sylvester

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)

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

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

The pieces were of a generous size, and after all three had gormandized themselves until, absolutely, they could contain no more, each had some left.

From Adrift in the Wilds or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys by Ellis, Edward Sylvester

Squirrels sat upon the logs near by and gormandized and chattered.

From On Canada's Frontier Sketches of History, Sport, and Adventure and of the Indians, Missionaries, Fur-traders, and Newer Settlers of Western Canada by Ralph, Julian

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

From Time Magazine Archive

Shakespeare warns you to make thy body less, hence thy grace more; leave gormandizing, and know that the grave doth gape for thee thrice wider than for other men.

From Diet and Health With Key to the Calories by Peters, Lulu Hunt

Sometimes a well staged scene of gormandizing viewed from a seat in the second or third row center of a softly lighted, thick carpeted food emporium saves us the price of our own meal.

From Laugh and Live by Fairbanks, Douglas

This fairy tale of a gormandizing people contains no mention of Thanksgiving Day.

From Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know by Dickinson, Asa Don

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)