Food vocabulary

September 4, 2026 ∙ Life

In the last 2-3 English classes, we were talking about food. I’d like to share some new words and phrases with some context and associations.

Food idioms

I think most people know “a piece of cake” or “not my cup of tea”. Here are some new ones:

to be nuts about sth - to be passionate about something. But don’t mix it up with:
to drive sb nuts - to make someone feel annoyed
to spill the beans - to reveal a secret. I had an association with метать бисер перед свиньями - to cast pearls before swine, but it turns out that phrase is actually a quote from Matthew 7:6.
to egg someone on - to encourage someone to do something they ought not to do (подстрекать). Has nothing to do with eggs (the food). It derives from the Old Norse verb eggja, meaning to incite, which comes from egg - edge.

How you eat. Some of them are examples of onomatopoeia - words that imitate the sound they describe.

devour - to eat everything, because you are hungry. From Old French devorer, from Latin devorare: de- - completely + vorare - to swallow.
guzzle - to drink quickly and in large amounts. Nothing in common with gas, which was coined by the Flemish chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont in the 17th century, based on the Greek word chaos, and came into English from Dutch.
eat up - to finish what is left
pick at some food - to take only small bites, because you are not hungry
polish off - to eat all of sth, quickly
nibble - to take small bites of sth. Probably from Low German knibbelen - to pick food with your fingernails.
gnaw - to bite something hard again and again, wearing it away little by little (a dog gnawing a bone). The g is silent.

saliva - the watery liquid in your mouth
dribble - when saliva comes out of the mouth and runs down the chin
nostrils - the two openings at the base of your nose
taste buds - “вкусовые луковицы” (often loosely called “вкусовые сосочки”), where bud is “почка”, or also nowadays AirPods-like headphones.
stalk - the stem of a plant that holds a leaf or a flower. Not related, but from the text.
sniff - to breathe in through the nose / aroma - a pleasant smell / whiff - a brief smell you catch