Those who might claim that wine connoisseurship is merely a rarified and unproductive pursuit of the leisure class take notice! The love of wine is contributing to society in meaningful ways, and I’m not talking about improving the health of laboratory mice. Thanks to an e-mail from fellow blogger Steve, over at The Wine Collector about a post on Mark Squires bulletin board, we now have proof that the love of wine is actually contributing to the strength and diversity of that most precious of resources: the English language.

Look up the word ‘beefy’ in the Fourth Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and you get the following definition:

BEEFY: Adjective.

Inflected forms: beef·i·er, beef·i·est

1a. Muscular in build; brawny: a beefy wrestler. b. Substantial; filling: “a rather . . . beefy, densely colored wine” (Robert M. Parker, Jr.)

2. Filled with beef.

There you have it. Wine critic Robert Parker, propping up the pillars of lexicography itself like some Titan of ancient mythology. The next time someone makes fun of you for being a wine geek, just ask them to what part of the English language they contributed a citation.

Now if I could only figure out who to lobby to get Vinography in there for petrichor….