While our 16-year-old brushed up for her French exam — by chatting with a tennis-playing Frenchman who attends Mercer University — I sipped on a white mocha and worked on my own vocabulary.
The coffee shop walls held decorative signs with definitions of words related to food and drink — such as “gourmet.”
The stated definition of “one with a passion for food or drink” was familiar, but a given synonym was not: gastronomer.
While the word derivation is clear, a gastronomer sounded more akin to a glutton than a gourmet to me. So I looked it up when I got home.
The dictionary revealed: “gas·tron·o·mer (g-strn-mr) n. A connoisseur of good food and drink” — the same as a gourmet.
Writers like having an ever-deepening well of words from which to draw. But, for me, the word gastronomer will have limited use unless I become a food critic.
And as one who grew up on fish sticks and pinto beans, that is unlikely. While I enjoy fine dining — such as multi-course meals in Paris and elsewhere — my proclivity for turnip greens and cornbread remains strong.
So, while the term gastronomer is not self-descriptive, at least it will be available should I need it to define another.
Better communication results from learning and using new words — whether of one’s native language or another. However, life’s bigger challenge is living out in meaningful ways the words we already know — like love, joy, peace, patience and kindness.
Some words we can define. Others define us.
Director of the Jesus Worldview Initiative at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee and former executive editor and publisher at Good Faith Media.
