Definition of "gourmandise" [gourmandise]

• A taste and relish for good food: "You could see the gourmandise shining on his rosy lips” ( Glenway Wescott). (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "I HAVE looked through various dictionaries for the word gourmandise and have found no translation that suited me."
• "The last holdover of the old way of thinking is the Catholic catechism, which keeps gluttony on its list of sins and indicates — by using the word gourmandise in the French version, and by defining sin in part as “a perverse attachment to certain goods” — that the original meaning of gluttony is to be understood."
• "To distinguish semantically between "gourmandise" in its proper application ( "la gourmandise proprement dite") and the common understanding of "gourmandise" as gluttony one must partake in the gourmand's powers of discrimination — unlike the lexicographers, but quintessentially like Savarin, whose prose, in portraying the gourmand's enjoyment of his expertise, takes pleasure it itself."