Lickerous

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Having a keen appetite for delicious food and sweet treats ; marked by an eager, greedy desire for something pleasing
2. Fond of tasty dishes and sweets to an excessive degree ; keenly longing for or grasping after something desirable
3. Greedy for delicacies and dainties ; eagerly hungry or avid for whatever gives pleasure

Etymology: "Lickerous" is an older spelling of a word now usually written "lecherous," and it once described a fondness for delicacies rather than for sex. In Middle English, "likerous" meant dainty or greedy for tasty food, and the sense of lust developed later, so the word was for a time a close cousin of "lecherous" with a much more appetite-focused meaning. The word came into English from Anglo-Norman, the French dialect used in England after 1066, where a form like "likerous" was probably a variant of "lecherous" that dropped the sound of the "ch." Old French had a related pair of words, "lecheor" and "lichieor," meaning glutton or lecher, which shows how closely eating and lust were linked in the medieval imagination. The English spelling "lickerous" keeps the sense of licking one's lips over something good, which is an apt picture for the original meaning.

Synonyms: greedy, gluttonous

Antonyms: abstemious