word choice - What is a non-pejorative antonym for gourmet?


I'm looking to describe two groups of people who eat pasta sauces. One type likes things like Rao's or Mario Batali. I'm describing them as "gourmet". A second group prefers Ragu and Prego. I was thinking utilitarian, but that's not quite right, and I don't want to use a term like unsophisticated or simple because the first is pejorative and the second isn't to do with taste in particular like gourmet is. Any ideas?



Answer



Simple is a tricky adjective to apply to people. In several phrases, it can be pejorative and for that reason some people will take it to be an insult regardless of the rest of the context. In particular is simple minded, which means lacking intelligence or good judgment.


In this particular case however, I would suggest the following phrase variations:



  • of simple taste

  • of simpler tastes

  • s/he is a wo/man of simple taste


In particular, saying something like:



On the one hand, we have gourmets who insist on the best of everything. On the other, are those of simpler tastes who are satisfied with the brands for the rest of us.



... makes it fairly clear that you are drawing a comparison in behavior without passing judgment on the quality of the people involved. Simple tastes may have been pejorative in the past, but in modern usage it is usually said as a point of pride. I think this transformation is in part due to the quote variously attributed to Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill:



I am a man of simple tastes: I am always satisfied with the best.



Other phrases you could slip into similar comparisons, but which I think are more easily taken to offense:



  • economical eater (or buyer) - clear that the motivation for the 'simpler' tastes is not the taste itself. This could be taken as pejorative in a different direction if thought to imply that the subject is impoverished.

  • undiscerning - antonym of discerning, which is a high-brow, non-pejorative way of saying picky.

  • perfunctory - draws the comparison that your 2nd group simply doesn't put the same effort into their food.

  • blissfully ignorant (of the gourmet) - makes it clear that your 2nd group is no less satisfied with their choices, regardless of what judgment the reader or the gourmets may pass on them.


But the bottom line is, people can and do take offense at anything. If you want to avoid any appearance of putting anyone down, you should do as Oldcat suggests and stick to classifying inanimate objects.



The trouble, I think, stems from a secondary meaning of gourmet. The primary definition of a gourmet is a noun, describing a person with good taste in food. This is still the subjective good, in that a gourmet can maintain their own preferences in food. In other words, a gourmet is someone who has the ability to make fine distinctions in the taste of food and drink.


The secondary meaning of gourmet is the adjective form, which implies a standard of quality that has to be met. However, this implies that certain foods, kitchens, eaters etc. are either gourmet or not based on how well they meet this standard. This meaning has made catapulted to prominence due to the pervasiveness of marketing. The implication it carries has created an objective standard. This has caused the whole conundrum of your question. In this sense of the word, being called not-gourmet is an insult; it's saying someone has bad taste in food, prefers inexpensive or bland meals, or can't taste the difference between a box wine and Dom Pérignon.



Therefore, I would propose taking your initial description in a different direction, you could classify your 1st group as food enthusiasts. This term has none of the objective/subjective baggage and simply means that they are interested in and motivated to learn about food.


It can still be a tricky term to find an antonym for, however. The best antonym for enthusiasm is apathy, which has a fair degree of negative connotation. Food apathist (strange there isn't a real coinage for this) or apathetic eater don't ring particularly positive for me. Other terms you could use are:



  • Indifferent

  • Disinterested

  • Egalitarian - purports the belief that food is food, regardless of how it tastes; as long as it keeps you alive, it's good. See soylent for an extreme example of this.

  • Agnostic - similar to egalitarian, it has the following definition



2. a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.



Which would make a food agnostic someone who does not believe in the absolute quality of one food over another. Also see: Hunger is the best spice.



On a related (sarcastic) note, I would contend that any true Gourmet would not be satisfied with any pre-made pasta sauce. Further, I contend that anyone who has ever made a fresh ragù from scratch would agree with me.


Dropping the sarcasm, I personally love to cook and eat a meal that requires hours of preparation and monitoring (I have it on good authority that a real ragù has to be simmered at least 3 hours to cross the threshold from a pomodoro sauce), but I rarely have the time to do everything I want. Most of the time, I'm cooking for speed, and if that means having Kraft dinner, I don't lose any sleep over it; in fact, I'm just as happy on those occasions.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE

Years and years ago, I remember reading in a book on AmE usage that the phrasal turn a baby creeps before it walks was to some extent more common to AmE than to BrE, which preferred exclusively the "crawl" version. And so, I just recently checked on the accuracy of that information on NGram Viewer , and it actually was fact... more than a century ago! What I would like you to tell is if it would sound sort of weird to hear someone say today in the US that a child "creeps" before walking and running (see Synonyms ) rather than it crawls. Also, what's the story to those terms? How did "to crawl" come to prevail and supersede "to creep" to describe the way a baby moves around? As with a plant, so with a child. His mind grows by natural stages. A child creeps before he walks , sits before he stands, cries before he laughs, babbles before he talks, draws a circle before he draws a square, lies before he tells the truth, and is selfish before he
Read more

commas - Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?

Does this sentence have too many subjunctives? If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed, and I will pay 10,000 talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king's business, that they may put it into the king's treasuries. I am stumped by this sentence construction. First, there is "Let it be," which is a common English idiomatic phrase, but then it follows another subjunctive. Is that to say you can actually have a subjunctive followed by another subjunctive? Also, why does the sentence use "please"? If that's the subjunctive tense there, then why is it followed by another subjunctive instead of a conditional, or maybe "Let it be" is the conditional? Lastly, I wish to know how the that is used in the sentence. Perhaps, the simplified sentence can be restated like so: Let it be decreed that they be destroyed and that they may put it into the king's treasuries. If not, maybe the simplified sent
Read more

time - English notation for hour, minutes and seconds

I often see English notation about time using the " and ' symbols. I have always mistaken about the two, and even their meaning. I'm more used to "01:05:56", for example. How do you represent the hour, minutes, and seconds using the apostrophe and quotes punctuations? Which is for the hour, which is for minutes, and which is for seconds? Is it the common way to write duration of time elapsed? Do they have a special pronunciation? Answer It's not particularly common for expressions of time. It's similar to degrees-minutes-seconds: instead of decimal degrees (38.897212°,-77.036519°) you write (38° 53′ 49.9632″, -77° 2′ 11.4678″). Both are derived from a sexagesimal counting system such as that devised in Ancient Babylon: the single prime represents the first sexagesimal division and the second the next, and so on. 17th-century astronomers used a third division of 1/60th of a second. The advantage of using minute and second symbols for time is that it o
Read more

grammatical number - Use of lone apostrophe for plural?

I've been reading William Manchester's book "American Caesar", which is about Douglas MacArthur, and I found that he uses a strange convention for pluralizing the family name. When talking about the MacArthurs as a whole, he writes MacArthur' with an apostrophe, as in "After the war, the MacArthur' lived in Tokyo while the general was proconsul" (yes, he uses that term to describe him). I have never seen or heard of a rule that would prescribe this. Manchester is a bit old-timey in his style: for example, he also writes "in behalf of" instead of "on behalf of", which is the only one I have ever seen. So perhaps this is similar. Where does he get this apostrophe from? Edit: There seems to be some difficulty finding examples, which is odd. Here is a direct link to a page from Google Books that shows the apostrophe.
Read more

etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"

What is the origin of the phrase shit eating grin ? How did it come to mean showing smugness or self-satisfaction of an individual's actions? Answer From the Urban Dictionary: ...these uses are documented in the Oxford English Dictionary no earlier than 1957 There have been similar expressions used quite far back: In Book XXI of his History of Rome, Livy describes a Carthaginian sect of coprophages, the risus faecivorus, or shit-eating grin, being commonly displayed by its adherents. Although, its origin is undetermined, they may have been incidents which caused the invention of this phrase. Below is an excerpt: "1944 Jrnl. Nerv. & Mental Dis. XCIX. 959 Among demented patients in advanced stages of their illness,..it is not rare to see some of them grasp their own feces, chew them and eat them often with great pleasure and satisfaction (coprophagia).
Read more

etymology - Where does the phrase "doctored" originate?

This is a phrase I’m particularly confused about, because it’s used often when something is manipulated or changed. For example, sometimes images surface online that are clearly Photoshopped, but people refer to them as “doctored” images. Why use the word “doctored” here? Answer The earliest Google Books match for an instance of doctored in a transitional (or perhaps post-transitional) sense between "amended" and "adulterated" appears in William Marshall, The Rural Economy of Glocestershire; Including Its Dairy: Together with the Dairy Management of North Wiltshire, and the Management of Orchards and Fruit Liquor, in Herefordshire , volume 2 (1789): Men in general, however, whose palates are set to rough cider, consider the common sweet sort as an effeminate beverage; and rough cider, properly manufactured, is probably the most generous liquor; being deemed more wholesome, to habits in general, than sweet cider:—even when genuine. That which is drank, in the kingd
Read more

word choice - Which is the correct spelling: “fairy” or “faerie”?

Fairy vs. faerie — which is the correct spelling? Answer As others have noted, fairy is the standard modern spelling, and faerie is a pseudo-archaism. However, in some contexts there is now a semantic distinction between the two spellings! In particular, fairy tales and the associated idea of fairies typically refer to the genre of folk stories printed by the Brothers Grimm, then sweetened and popularized for modern audiences by Disney et al. Faerie stories , on the other hand, are stories about the fae : otherworldly, unpredictable, and dangerous creatures who appear in the folk-tales and myths of England and Ireland. In origin, of course, the fairies and the fae are one and the same, but the connotations and usage of the words today are headed in opposite directions. A Google image search for fairy vs. faerie shows a lot of overlap, but some very significant differences in tone and content between the two terms. Note that the search for "fairy" turns up a number
Read more