epicure

epicure, gourmet, gourmand, glutton, bon vivant, gastronome mean one who takes pleasure in eating and drinking.

An epicure is one who is choice and fastidious while at the same time voluptuous in enjoyment of food and drink; the term is also applied to a connoisseur in an art involving both feasting and delicacy of taste

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I am become a perfect epicure in reading; plain beef or solid mutton will never do— Goldsmith

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an epicure in many of the delights of the senses— Canby

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A gourmet is a connoisseur in delicate or exotic dishes, liquors, and wines; the term carries as its distinctive connotation the savoring as of each morsel of food or sip of wine, and the power to distinguish delicate differences in flavor or quality

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the most finished gourmet of my acquaintance— Thackeray

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eating habits ... of a determined gourmet, verging at times on those of a gourmand— Kahn

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Gour-mand implies less fastidiousness and less discernment than gourmet, but it suggests a hearty interest in and enjoyment of good food and drink rather than, as glutton does, greedy and voracious eating and drinking

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I dare say, their table is always good, for the Landgrave is a gourmand— Chesterfield

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youth is a gourmand when it cannot be a gourmet— McClure's Mag.

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it would be difficult to determine whether they were most to be distinguished as gluttons or epicures; for they were, at once, dainty and voracious, understood the right and the wrong of every dish, and alike emptied the one and the other— Burney

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Bon vivant differs little from gourmand except in its stronger connotation of a lively or spirited enjoyment of the pleasures of the table, especially in the company of others

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the Major was somewhat of a bon vivant, and his wine was excellent— Scott

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he was also a bon vivant, a diner-out, and a storyteller— Fraser's Mag.

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Gastronome is equivalent to epicure, with perhaps greater stress on expert knowledge and appreciation of fine food and wine and of the ritual of preparation and serving of them

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a conversation on the mysteries of the table, which ... a modern gastronome might have listened to with pleasure— Scott

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Analogous words: connoisseur, *aesthete, dilettante