gluttony

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English glotonie, also glutunie,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French glutonie, also glotonie,^[5][3][4] an abstract noun^[5] from gluton (“glutton”), also gloton, and the suffix -ie.^[2][3] The French base comes from Latin gluttō (“overeater”),^[4][6][7] which is related to gluttiō (“to swallow”) and gula (“throat”).^[4][6] Ayto traces this family to Proto-Indo-European *gel-,^[8] while Barnhart presents the link with that root only as possible.^[7] In modern French the noun has been replaced by gloutonnerie; compare gluttonry.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The vice of eating too much, which the OED notes as one of the seven deadly sins: its first record is the Ancrene Riwle of about 1225.^[5] Etymonline dates the form glutunie to about 1200,^[4] Barnhart to probably before 1200,^[7] and the Dictionary.com text gives the range 1175–1225.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The word came with a moral charge: the Old French noun could mean debauchery as well as gluttony,^[4] and the OED's first English sense is the vice.^[5] Chaucer uses it 23 times and Gower 4 times, and Chaucer's plural means greedy desires.^[10] Johnson (1755) defines it as too much eating and luxury of the table,^[11] and modern dictionaries add drinking and the idea of habit.^[2][12][13] A figurative use is recorded rarely from 1704, in Steele,^[5] and Merriam-Webster now gives greedy indulgence of any desire as a sense of its own.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1225 – the vice of excessive eating, in the Ancrene Riwle.^[5] Etymonline dates the word to about 1200, and Merriam-Webster to the 13th century.^[4][2]
• 1704 – figurative use, in Steele's Lying Lover.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. Excess in eating or drinking, especially as a habit; rarely, an instance of it: The feast was an hour of pure gluttony.^[2][13][5]
2. Greedy or excessive indulgence of any desire.^[2]

Related words

• glut
• glutton
• gluttonous
• gullet
• gluttonry

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
4. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt