Sybaritic

Definition: loving sensual pleasure or luxury

This comes from the ancient city of Sybaris, which was renowned for its hedonism and luxury.

It’s pronounced “seh-BAR-ritick,” kind of like “arthritic.” The last two syllables run together.

Why I Looked It Up

It came up a couple times in Cork Dork:

The literature makes the life in wine seem utterly sybaritic: a log of fancy men … drinking fancy bottles in fancy places.

And:

They epitomized what I found endlessly intriguing about the sommeliers, which was the fact that they united extremes of personality – devoutly studious and unrelentingly sybaritic – I’d rarely seen in combination.

(The word has nothing to do with wine, the author just seemed to like it.)

I also remember a luxury “hotel” in Chicago called Sybaris. It wasn’t really a hotel, as much as it was a place to go for random assignations – probably a place for wealthy men to take their girlfriends, paid for by the hour.