Word of the Day

: December 12, 2010

gulosity

noun goo-LAH-suh-tee

What It Means

: excessive appetite : greediness

gulosity in Context

After Bobby helped himself to a third serving of mashed potatoes, his father asked incredulously, "Does your gulosity know no bounds?"

"This new generation of activists will need to devise methods of shattering the shields of apathy and gulosity that encase so many Americans…." -- From Tom H. Hastings's 2006 book The Lessons of Nonviolence: Theory and Practice in a World of Conflict

Did You Know?

"Gulosity" is a rare word for gluttony that sees only occasional use in English these days. It derives via Middle English and Anglo-French from the Latin adjective "gulosus" ("gluttonous") and ultimately from the noun "gula" ("gullet"). It was apparently a favorite word of famed 18th-century author and lexicographer Samuel Johnson, who has been falsely credited with coining "gulosity," even though evidence for the word’s use dates back to the 15th century. According to his biographer, James Boswell, Johnson was no light eater himself: he “indulged with such intenseness, that while in the act of eating, the veins of his forehead swelled, and generally a strong perspiration was visible.”