Word of the Day

: January 20, 2021

gulosity

noun goo-LAH-suh-tee

What It Means

: excessive appetite : greediness

gulosity in Context

"After a Christmas period generally spent lying down, motionless and swollen, it was time to get back to a life of squats, lunges and sub-9,000 calorie days. Before letting go of my acquired gulosity completely, I decided to indulge in one last meal of excess." — James Ashford, The Independent (UK), 11 Jan. 2013

"By the time I was in high school, so convinced was I of the worthiness and delectations of [the English] language that I pounced upon its literature with a ravenous appetite that, at times, alarmed my father, who thought my sociability was cast into arrears owing to my bookish gulosity." — Ramnath Subramanian, The El Paso (Texas) Times, 9 Sep. 2004

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."