fletcherize
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
Fletcher + -ize, after Horace Fletcher, who advocated the practice.
Verb edit
fletcherize (third-person singular simple present fletcherizes, present participle fletcherizing, simple past and past participle fletcherized)
- (transitive, intransitive) To thoroughly chew (dozens or hundreds of times) before swallowing.
- 1909 September 24, J. H. Kellogg, “Tobacco Deadly Poison in Any and All Doses”, in The Battle Creek Idea[1], volume II, number 42, Battle Creek, Michigan, page 2:
- If you have learned to chew your food, continue to fletcherize, be enthusiastic about it.
- 1911 May, Ellis Parker Butler, “The Bone-Crackers: A Dietetic Comedy in One Act”, in Munsey's Magazine[2], volume XLV, number II, page 204:
- William, how many times must I tell you to fletcherize your bones before you swallow them? You might as well be eating bread and butter, or roast beef, if you don't fletcherize your bones properly. Chew each bite of bone four hundred times, young man, or I'll get a jaw-meter and make you wear it!
- 1912, Edgar Jepson, The Man with the Black Feather[3], Small, Maynard, free translation (not in original) of La double vie de Théophraste Longuet by Gaston Leroux, published 1903, page 275:
- I am assured that if a man chews it in the manner invented by M. Fletcher of the United States, he can live for an unlimited period on four ounces a day .... We have therefore food for one man for forty days, food for two for twenty days. ... at the end of that twenty days, one of us will Fletcherise the other!
- 1934, Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance[4], Appleton-Century Company, page 365:
- We all knew that for years he had suffered from the evil effects of a dangerous dietary system, called (after the name of its egregious inventor) “Fletcherizing”.
- (figurative, by extension) To consume, to devour, to bite, to chew over.
- 1913, William Thomas Goffe, Problems in Retail Selling, Analyzed, page 71:
- Indeed he may fletcherize a truth mentally, all day long, and not get action. Thus he will not grow and develop.
- 1925, P.G. Wodehouse, The Adventures of Sally[6]:
- The terrier had got the poodle by the left hind-leg and was restating his war-aims. The raffish mongrel was apparently endeavouring to fletcherize a complete stranger of the Sealyham family.