A.Word.A.Day --grangousier

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Today's Word

Grangousier or Grandgousier

PRONUNCIATION:

(gran-GOO/GOU-zee-uhr)

MEANING:

noun:
1. A big eater.
2. A gullible person, one who will swallow anything.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Grangousier (in French: Grandgousier), a character who loves good living, in François Rabelais’s story Gargantua. The name Grangousier is coined from the French grand gosier (big throat). Earliest documented use: 1580.

NOTES:

The word gullible is from the word gull, one who is easily duped. It’s not certain where the word gull came from. Perhaps it’s from an obsolete verb gull (to swallow). Grangousier is a giant with a hearty appetite. He’s a good king who advocates peace, rather than war and greed. His son Gargantua and grandson Pantagruel have also become eponyms in the English language.

USAGE:

“Jean Renoir was born on Sep 15, 1894 ... his father Auguste Renoir reacting to the arrival that night of such a Grangousier by exclaiming, ‘What a mouth! A furnace! He’ll have the appetite of a horse!’”
Pascal Merigeau; Jean Renoir: A Biography; Running Press; 2017.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

In its original literal sense, "moral relativism" is simply moral complexity. That is, anyone who agrees that stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's children is not the moral equivalent of, say, shoplifting a dress for the fun of it, is a relativist of sorts. But in recent years, conservatives bent on reinstating an essentially religious vocabulary of absolute good and evil as the only legitimate framework for discussing social values have redefined "relative" as "arbitrary". -Ellen Jane Willis, writer (14 Dec 1941-2006)

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