gluttonous
adjUS, UK /ˈɡlʌt(ə)nəs/
Etymology From Middle English glotenose, glotenouse, glotonos, glotonous, glotounius, glotynous, from Middle French glotonos; equivalent to glutton + -ous.
1
Given to excessive eating; prone to overeating.
- Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Matthew 11:19:
2
Greedy.
- Then they could smile and fawn upon his debts, / And take down the interest into their gluttonous maws.c. 1605–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Tymon of Athens”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iv]:
- ["]The voracious caterpillar when transformed into a butterfly," … "and the gluttonous maggot when become a fly," content themselves with a drop or two of honey or some other sweet liquid.1854 August 9, Henry D[avid] Thoreau, “Higher Laws”, in Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, page 231:
4 more examples
- Do the feasters gluttonous feast? / Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and bolted doors? / Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground, / Pioneers! O pioneers!1865 October 28, Walt Whitman, “Pioneers! O Pioneers!”, in Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps, New York, N.Y.: […] [Peter Eckler], →OCLC, stanza 24, page 29:
- Look your last on your dearest ones, / Brothers and husbands, fathers, sons: / Swift they go to the ravenous guns, / The gluttonous guns of War.1914, Robert W. Service, The Call:
- One day the mail-man found no village there, / Nor were its folk or houses seen again; / People came out from Aylesbury to stare – / Yet they all told the mail-man it was plain / That he was mad for saying he had spied / The great hill's gluttonous eyes, and jaws stretched wide.1929, H.P. Lovecraft, Fungi from Yuggoth:
- My dreams were largely based on the works of Dickens (his Mugby Junction stories), Thackeray (Jeames on the Gauge Question), and Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes stories I kept devouring with gluttonous abandon.2026 April 1, Vitali Vitaliev, “Literature on the track”, in RAIL, number 1058, page 68:
- Derived terms
- gluttonousness, overgluttonous, ungluttonous
- Related terms
- glutton, gluttonously, gluttony