The meaty issue of gourmet v. gourmand

By WARREN CLEMENTS

Wednesday, January 15, 2003

If a gourmet and a gourmand were invited to a buffet, would the gourmet get anything to eat?

A group in France called the Association for the Gourmand Issue, composed of chefs, writers and celebrity food-lovers, want to rescue the French nouns le gourmand and la gourmandise from their original disparaging meanings. According to a report Sunday in Paris's Le Journal du Dimanche, they resent that people still think a gourmand is a greedy sod who stuffs himself at the table, rather than a close cousin of the gourmet in his appreciation of fine food and vintage wine. They regret that the Roman Catholic Church continues to use la gourmandise rather than la gloutonnerie as the French word for gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins, and want Pope John Paul II to change this.

It's a meaty issue, but the dictionaries aren't much help. The 1998 edition of the French-English Collins Robert Dictionary translates the adjective gourmand as greedy, the expression cette voiture est très gourmande as "this car's a gas-guzzler" and, like the Vatican, la gourdmandise as the sin of gluttony. At the same time, it translates gluttony as la gloutonnerie and saysthe phrase il est gourmand comme un chat (like a cat) means "he likes good food but he's fussy about what he eats."

In English, which long ago swallowed all these words whole, the gourmand question continues to cause heartburn. Though the etymology is unclear, both gourmand and gourmet may have derived from the Old French groumet or gromet, first suggesting a groom (of stables, or a serving-man) and later a servant at table who knew a thing or two about fine dining.

We do know that gourmand was an accepted English word by the 15th century, used by William Caxton (printer of the first book in English around 1475) in 1491: "Take none hede to gourmans & glotons whiche ete more than is to theym necessary." The Oxford English Dictonary's first positive citation of the word is in 1758: "I dare say their table is always good, for the Landgrave is a Gourmand." Even then, William Thackeray used the negative sense in Vanity Fair in 1848: "Jos, that fat gourmand, drank up the whole contents of the bowl."

In the 21st century, the gourmand appears to have shed his reputation as a trencherman (a hearty eater; the trencher was the platter on which food was served). The Globe's own Joanne Kates wrote of lawyer Clayton Ruby last November as "not only a great gourmand but also a serious wine fancier."

Yet the word experts waver. The 1965 edition of H. W. Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, revised by Sir Ernest Gowers, said the term gourmand "ranges in sense from greedy feeder to lover and judge of good fare" and "usually implies some contempt." The 1996 edition, largely rewritten by R. W. Burchfield, says: "As the 20th century comes to an end, the preference of conservative speakers is to restrict the favourable sense (a judge of good eating) to gourmet, and to apply gourmand only to those for whom quantity is more important than delicate judgment. In practice, the conservative view seems to be the prevailing one, but for how long?"

The Oxford Guide to Canadian English Usage notes that "many commentators" divide gourmets from gourmands, but says, "gourmand is often used interchangeably with gourmet." Unhelpfully, it adds that the verb, to gormandize, "is to eat either voraciously or discerningly."

As for the true sin of gourmandise, have you seen some of the prices they've been charging lately?

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