In Anthony Burgess’s biography of William Shakespeare he draws a comparison between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson concerning the matter of their attitude toward food and drink.

He [Shakespeare] did not drink much — there is the tradition that he would decline invitations to beery bouts with the excuse that he was “in pain” — but it is doubtful whether he ate much either. There is gulosity in Ben Jonson’s plays, but no slavering in Will’s.

Slavering is a word you don’t hear much anymore, though I have used it a couple of times over the years. It just means drooling or (in the case of large dog breeds) slobbering in anticipation of eating. Gulosity is also a word that once was fairly well known but you will almost never see today. The WordPress spell checker didn’t recognize it when I drew up this post, and I pulled a blank when I came across it in the book. It comes from the Latin for gluttonous. The meaning is basically the same as gluttony, and like gluttony it can be extended to any kind of excessive greediness or appetite (like being a “glutton for punishment”).

This seems to be another case where one word, gluttony, has bumped another, gulosity, out of use since we don’t need two words for the same thing. I think I may try to use it though, since I also try to throw “esurient” in the mix every now and then.

Words, words, words