Hi. I'm looking for words that describe being good or skilled at something... NOT general descriptions like 'proficiency'.
e.g. articulate = good at speaking, presenting an argument
Are there any equivalent words which you could use to specifically describe someone who's good at listening, tasting, writing, drawing...?
Gourmand - tasting, maybe.
"Gourmet," maybe. Or "epicure." But not gourmand. A gourmand is supposed to have an utterly undiscriminating appetite; he'll eat anything, any time, with gusto but no palate, no appreciation whatsoever of any finer sensibilities.
(Noodling about, I see the distinction is becoming blurred with time, and the original gluttony/piggishness of "gourmand" is being lost. The prescriptivist in me rebels. But then, I also think that "disinterested" and "uninterested" don't mean the same thing, which is disputed as far back as Webster's Third International Dictionary. And that's back in 1961.)
Who you gonna believe, me or some strange dictionary?
Who you gonna believe, me or some strange dictionary?
On the question of disinterested vs. uninterested, I'm sticking with you. Come to think of it, I'm with you on gourmand, too, but that may be from a French class in about 1958, rather than English. So, yeah, I'll go with strange you rather than some dictionary.
