Friday, February 8, 2013

gastronomy

gastronomy \ga-STRON-uh-mee\, noun:

1. the art or science of good eating.
2. a style of cooking or eating.

Well, you know how in the Poirot books he always goes on vacation to get away from it all, the mysteries and whatever else, only to have a murder committed on the very island he's fled to for peace and quiet and some civilized gastronomy?
-- Lev Grossman, The Magician King
"Tell me, dear lady," she would shriek down the table at me with a comradely twinkle, "tell me . . . explain to all of us, how one can dare to call herself a writer on gastronomy in the United States, where, from everything we hear, gastronomy does not yet exist?"
-- M.F.K. Fisher, Two Towns in Provence

The name of this delicious discipline entered the lexicon in the early 1800s. Gastronomy combines the prefix gastro- from the Greek gastēr meaning "stomach" and the suffix -nomy indicating a science or field of study.

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