A gourmet has refined, expert taste in food and drink, judging quality over quantity. A gourmand is someone who loves food in generous amounts, and in its older sense can simply mean a greedy eater. Call a fussy food critic a gourmet, and a hearty second-helpings diner a gourmand.
The core difference
Gourmet is about refined taste; gourmand is about a hearty appetite, sometimes to excess.
- gourmet — someone with refined, expert taste in food and drink: As a gourmet, she could name the exact region a wine came from just by tasting it.
- gourmand — someone who loves food and drink in large amounts, or, in its older sense, an excessive or greedy eater.
How to tell them apart
Gourmet can also work as an adjective describing food itself, as in a gourmet meal, meaning high quality and carefully prepared. Gourmand has no such adjective use; it always describes the person and their appetite, not the food.
The two get mixed up because both sound sophisticated and both come from French, but gourmet's French root points to a wine expert's refined judgement, while gourmand's older root points simply to gluttony, before the word softened to also mean a hearty food lover.
