Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A person who eats or consumes immoderate amounts of food and drink.
  • noun A person with an inordinate capacity to receive or withstand something.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To eat or indulge the appetite to excess; gormandize.
  • To overfill, as with food; glut.
  • noun One who indulges to excess in eating, or in eating and drinking; one who gorges himself with food; a gormandizer.
  • noun One who indulges in anything to excess; a greedy person.
  • noun In zoöl.: A popular name of the wolverene, Gulo luscus or arcticus, the largest and most voracious species of the family Mustelidæ.
  • Of or belonging to a glutton; gluttonous.
  • noun In pugilism, one who takes a great deal of punishment before he is beaten.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who eats voraciously, or to excess; a gormandizer.
  • noun Fig.: One who gluts himself.
  • noun (Zoöl.) A carnivorous mammal (Gulo gulo formerly Gulo luscus), of the weasel family Mustelidæ, about the size of a large badger; called also wolverine, wolverene and carcajou. It was formerly believed to be inordinately voracious, whence the name. It is a native of the northern parts of America, Europe, and Asia.
  • noun (Zoöl.) the giant fulmar (Ossifraga gigantea); -- called also Mother Carey's goose, and mollymawk.
  • adjective Gluttonous; greedy; gormandizing.
  • verb obsolete To glut; to eat voraciously.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective gluttonous; greedy; gormandizing.
  • noun One who eats voraciously, obsessively, or to excess; a gormandizer.
  • noun figuratively One who consumes voraciously, obsessively, or to excess
  • noun zoology A carnivorous mammal (Gulo gulo), of the family Mustelidæ, about the size of a large badger. It was formerly believed to be inordinately voracious, whence the name; the wolverine. It is a native of the northern parts of America, Europe, and Asia.
  • verb obsolete To glut; to eat voraciously.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a person who is devoted to eating and drinking to excess
  • noun musteline mammal of northern Eurasia

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English glotoun, from Old French gloton, from Latin gluttō, gluttōn-.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old French gloton, gluton, from Latin gluto, glutonis.

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Examples

  • Gourmand has taken on an even fancier ring than gourmet, while the word glutton can be applied only to someone who eats an enormous amount of food at one sitting — usually cheap food, and with the standard of what constitutes “enormous” revised upward each year for obvious reasons.

    Hard to Swallow 2007

  • Gourmand has taken on an even fancier ring than gourmet, while the word glutton can be applied only to someone who eats an enormous amount of food at one sitting — usually cheap food, and with the standard of what constitutes “enormous” revised upward each year for obvious reasons.

    Hard to Swallow 2007

  • Gourmand has taken on an even fancier ring than gourmet, while the word glutton can be applied only to someone who eats an enormous amount of food at one sitting — usually cheap food, and with the standard of what constitutes “enormous” revised upward each year for obvious reasons.

    Hard to Swallow 2007

  • - If you are a habitual consumer of little cakes, it will jump out in front of you and call you, “fatty!” and you will be plagued every day of your life by being called a glutton and a pig.

    Urban Legends 2006

  • In a society where food is scarce, the glutton is a wasteful menace.

    Link Farm & Open Thread #26 2006

  • He was a carpenter after all, and I am told that carpenters in those days chopped their own trees and milled the wood by hand. and he was semitic. and he was called a glutton and a drunkard by his detractors, so maybe he had a belly and a red nose?

    Philocrites: Christmas loot report. 2005

  • The writer of perhaps the greatest historical novel in the English language, "The Cloister and the Hearth," was what one might call a glutton for thoroughness.

    Imperishable Fiction: An Inquiry into the Short Life of the 'Best Sellers' Reveals the Methods Which Brought into Being the Novels that Endure 1914

  • The writer of perhaps the greatest historical novel in the English language, _The Cloister and the Hearth_, was what one might call a glutton for thoroughness.

    Vanishing Roads and Other Essays Richard Le Gallienne 1906

  • She is a little bit of a glutton is my Jane, and she overate herself at tea at the Singletons '.

    A Modern Tomboy A Story for Girls L. T. Meade 1884

  • The god of a glutton is his belly; of a lover his lust; and so every man serves that to which he is in bondage; and has his heart there where his treasure is.

    Catena Aurea - Gospel of Matthew 1225?-1274 1842

Comments

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  • See wolverine.

    March 14, 2011