A.Word.A.Day -- fletcherize

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Mar 5, 2001

This week's theme
Eponyms

This week's words
fletcherize
grinch
John Bull
aristarch
Chicken Little

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

The idea of Fletcherizing invites the question, "Is too much of a good thing better?" Horace Fletcher proposed that one should grind food once for each tooth in the mouth. That implies that we masticate each bite of pizza as many as 32 times. I'd rather stick with the idea that each byte has eight bits. At any rate, Mr. Fletcher, the art dealer turned nutritionist, did earn the moniker `The Great Masticator,' for his popular book at the time and got his name into the dictionary. This week we'll look at more such words, eponyms, coined after people from fact and from fiction.

fletcherize

(FLECH-uh-ryz)

verb tr., intr.: To chew food thoroughly.

From the practice of chewing food many many times as advocated by Horace Fletcher, U.S. nutritionist (1849-1919).

"Dinner table conversation comes to a halt as people around the nation Fletcherize."
Morsels from Diet History; Florida Today; Oct 19, 1999.

X-Bonus

People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within. -Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, psychiatrist and author (1926-2004)

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