グルメ

Ca. 1330 is the French historical point that CNRTL gives for groumete, a female wine broker, before 1402 gourmet and 1458 wine-taster senses. Japanese グルメ takes French gourmet, which Larousse defines as a person who can judge good cooking and good wines. CNRTL connects gourmet to Old French grommes and Old English grom. Seisenban Nihon Kokugo Daijiten also lists the Japanese word as French gourmet. In Japanese, the borrowing spread as a food and media word in the late Showa period, alongside ガストロノーム, グルマン, レストラン, and ワイン. The meaning moved from a person with food knowledge to a wider label for food itself. Daijisen notes ご当地グルメ and グルメガイド, where グルメ points to local dishes, restaurant information, or popular eating topics. B級グルメ also became a local-promotion compound. Modern グルメ can describe a person, a TV segment, a magazine section, a regional dish, or a search category on a map app. French gourmet still mainly names a person with judgment about food and wine, and English gourmet can also work as an adjective in gourmet food. Japanese often turns it into a noun for cuisine and can modify another noun, as in グルメ番組. Example: ご当地グルメを探す.