Gamey means tasting strongly of wild meat. A gamey flavour, gamey and rich, too gamey for some.
It comes from the animal's diet and exercise and from hanging the meat, which develops the flavour deliberately. Whether it is a compliment depends entirely on the eater, since the same taste is prized and avoided in equal measure.
1adjectivegameyTasting strongly of wild meat.
“The venison was a little too gamey for the children, who preferred chicken.”
gamey is a quality.
Middle English
game
English
game
English, today
gamey
Built from
From game + -y. game comes from Middle English game. From Middle English game, gamen, gammen, from Old English gamen (“sport, joy, mirth, pastime, game, amusement, pleasure”), from Proto-West Germanic gaman, from Proto-Germanic gamaną (“amusement, pleasure, game", literally "participation, communion, people together”), from ga- + mann- (“man”); or alternatively from ga- + a root from Proto-Indo-European men- (“to think, have in mind”). Cognate with yol gaame, gaaume, gaume (“game”), Old Frisian game, gome (“joy, amusement, entertainment”), Dutch gemelijk (“cantankerous, crabbed”), Middle High German gamen (“joy, amusement, fun, pleasure”), Danish gammen (“merriment”), Icelandic -, Norwegian Nynorsk gaman (“joy, fun”), Swedish gamman (“mirth, rejoicing, merriment”). Related to gammon, gamble.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA