opsomania means A longing for a particular special food. It carries an Arena rating of 1403, earned across 5 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, opsomania ranks #1,940 of 17,163 for Funniest Words, #2,108 of 17,149 for Most Exacting Words, #2,462 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #2,498 of 17,151 for The Improbable.
Why “opsomania” is a great word
An excessive or obsessive craving for a particular kind of food, derived from the Greek ὄψον (opson, 'relish, delicacy, food eaten with bread') and -μανία (-mania, 'madness, frenzy, excessive enthusiasm'). Unlike 'gourmandise,' which implies a general and hearty enjoyment of the table, or 'pica,' which denotes a craving for the inedible, opsomania is a fixation on a singular, edible delicacy. It is the child who will eat nothing but strawberries for weeks, the adult who dreams nightly of a particular cheese from a particular valley, or the exile who spends years trying to recreate a lost taste from childhood. This is not appetite but devotion: the body’s stubborn, wordless prayer for a taste that feels like home.
noun
- A longing for a particular special food.e.g.“Opsomania is the latest new disease, and hypnotism is its remedy.” — 1904, Journal of Medicine and Science, volume 10, page 144:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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