Foodie

How to spell foodie

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce foodie

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does foodie mean?

1. nounA person with a keen and discerning interest in food, cooking, and eating well.

Foodie in a sentence

• My brother is a real foodie who plans entire holidays around restaurants.

• The new market stall attracts every foodie in the neighbourhood.

Where does foodie come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a thoroughly modern coinage, built on the ancient noun 'food', which comes from the Old English fōda, meaning 'nourishment' or 'sustenance', and traces back to a Germanic root tied to the idea of feeding and rearing. The casual suffix '-ie' is the same friendly, slightly affectionate ending found in words like 'movie' and 'techie', used to label a person devoted to a particular interest. 'Foodie' itself emerged in the early 1980s, with food writers in New York and London popularising it to describe enthusiasts who treated eating and cooking as a serious hobby rather than mere necessity. It quickly displaced the older and stuffier 'gourmet', because it suggested passion and curiosity instead of snobbery. The spelling trap is small but real: the word keeps the full 'food' intact and simply adds '-ie', so it is 'foodie' rather than the tempting but incorrect 'foody'.

How the word is built

• food (from Old English fōda: nourishment)
• -ie (familiar/diminutive noun suffix)