Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who finds and frequents good tables; an epicure.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who is apt to find and frequent good tables; a parasite; a sponger.
  • noun A feast at which the guests are supposed to feed upon the odors only of the viands.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun archaic One who is apt to find and frequent good tables; a parasite; a sponger.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Mr Portman Seymour, who was a jovial companion, and indulged his appetites, but otherwise a good man; Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough's brother, a man of courage, but a lover of wine; Mr Pereira, a Jew and smell-feast, and other hard drinkers, declared, that the want of French wine was not to be endured, and that they could hardly bear up under so great a calamity.

    The Book-Hunter A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author John Hill Burton

  • The Woman Hater, said to be Fletcher's earliest play, has a character of rare comic, or at least farcical virtue in the smell-feast Lazarillo with his Odyssey in chase of the Umbrana's head (a delicacy which is perpetually escaping him); and The Nice Valour contains, in Chamont and his brother, the most successful attempts of the English stage at the delineation of the point of honour gone mad.

    A History of Elizabethan Literature George Saintsbury 1889

  • To the gamblers this will be a trouvaille, but it will be a hard lick on the smell-feast.

    A Controversy Between "Erskine" and "W. M." on the Practicability of Suppressing Gambling. 1862

  • So say I, Who has a stupid intellect, a broken memory, and a blasted wit, and (which is worse than all) a blind and benighted conscience, but the intemperate and luxurious, the epicure and the smell-feast?

    Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions. Vol. II. 1634-1716 1823

  • As vagrant followers hover on the verge of a camp, or watchful vultures circle around their prey, so these lower parasites (distinct from the other well-born, more aristocratic genus of smell-feast) prowled vigilantly without the castle walls and beyond the limits of the royal pleasure grounds, finding occasional employment from lackey, valet or equerry, who, imitating their betters, amused themselves betimes with some low buffoon or vulgar clown and rewarded him for his gross stories and antics with a crust and a cup.

    Under the Rose Frederic Stewart Isham

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