These words refer to people who have an intense interest in food. Gourmet indicates someone who is a connoisseur of good cooking and is knowledgeable and discriminating about the niceties of food preparation and serving. The word suggests a taste for elegance and concern for all aspects of the ritual of dining, including the selection of foods and wines that are thought to harmonize with each other: as much a gourmet of French as of Mexican or Chinese cuisine; thinking to pass himself off as a gourmet by criticizing the modest rosé she had chosen to accompany their seafood dinner. Gastronome is a more formal substitute for gourmet but, if anything, suggests even more expertise about everything pertaining to food: expatiating like a true gastronome on the effect to be obtained by spicing the filet with marjoram instead of thyme.

Gourmand suggests someone for whom the eating of food itself is the primary interest. Although the gourmand appreciates good cooking, he judges this more by its taste than by the canon of rules and regulations with which the gourmet or gastronome may be familiar; wives who treat their husbands like gourmets only to find them responding like gourmands ; A gourmand must have originated the notion that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. A trencherman is similar to a gourmand but is more down to earth with his hearty appetite and enjoyment of eating: Bill will do the dinner justice – he always was a good trencherman . Glutton is in sharp contrast to all these words by suggesting a person totally indifferent to the fine points of cooking and perhaps even to the taste of the food he eats. The main emphasis here is on endless appetite and the devouring of food in quantities: food so tasteless and ill-prepared that it could appeal only to a starving man or a glutton . The word is often used with humorous intention to describe an insatiable craving for a particular food: hot spells that turn us into gluttons for ice cream and watermelon.