Gourmand and Gourmet - Commonly Confused Words

The noun gourmand refers to someone who is extremely (and often excessively) fond of eating and drinking.

A gourmet is a connoisseur: someone with refined tastes in food and drink.

While both words refer to someone who loves good food, gourmand and gourmet have different connotations. See the Usage Notes below.

Examples:

• In his first movie role, Charles Laughton played a grotesque gourmand who anticipated Monty Python's Mr. Creosote.


• Gourmet trends have spelled doom for such formerly obscure species as Chilean sea bass, monkfish, and orange roughy.

Usage Notes:

• "A gourmet is someone who would not fly from New York to Nebraska simply to check out a steakhouse rumored to serve beef in the rough shape and size of a softball. A gourmand is someone who would."
  (Paul Gray, Galloping Gourmand. Time magazine, Sep. 18, 1978)



• "[A] gourmet is a knowledgeable and fastidious epicure; a gourmand is a person who likes good food in large quantities--a gourmet who eats too much. Gourmand is often described as having contemptuous overtones that gourmet lacks. . . .
  
  "The meaning of gourmand is now certainly closer to gourmet than it is to glutton, but our evidence shows clearly that gourmand and gourmet are still words with distinct meanings in the bulk of their use, and are likely to remain so."
  (Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. Merriam-Webster, 1994)



• "Gourmet, a French borrowing meaning 'a connoisseur of food and drink, a person of discriminating palate,' is much more in use in English today than its compatriot, gourmand, which sometimes means 'a big eater and drinker,' or even 'a glutton,' and sometimes simply 'a heartier sort of gourmet.' Gourmet has become a cliche for anyone with pretensions to good taste in food and drink, and the adjective today often describes any cook or any eatery thought to be better (perhaps) than indifferent. Gourmand is fading; gourmet is overused."
  (Kenneth G. Wilson, The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Columbia University Press, 1993)

Practice

(a) Orson Welles was a conspicuous _____ who thought nothing of washing down a roasted duck and a huge porterhouse steak with three or four bottles of wine.

(b) Victor considered himself a _____ and a wine connoisseur with exquisitely refined tastes.

Answers to Practice Exercises

 

Answers to Practice Exercises: Gourmand and Gourmet

(a) Orson Welles was a conspicuous gourmand who thought nothing of washing down a roasted duck and a huge porterhouse steak with three or four bottles of wine.

(b) Victor considered himself a gourmet and a wine connoisseur with exquisitely refined tastes.
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