Snack

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Dr. Goodword
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Snack

Postby Dr. Goodword » Thu Jul 28, 2022 7:26 pm

• snack •


Pronunciation: snæk • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun, verb

Meaning: 1. (Noun) A light or hurried repast, food suitable for such a repast eaten between meals. 2. (Noun, regional) A sudden snap, bite such as a dog might make. 3. (Verb) To eat a snack.

Notes: Snack comes with a small, close-knit family. A snack shop has been called a snackery and, in the Caribbean, a snackette. Someone who is snacking is, of course, a snacker.

In Play: Snacks play a significant role in human diets: "People who watch TV at mealtimes tend to eat more pizza and salty snacks and less fruit and vegetables than other families." We tend to carry the concept snack as far as possible: "You can find unusual snacks on the streets of Chinese cities, like fried duck heads, tarantulas, and scorpions."

Word History: In Middle English today's Good Word was spelled snacke, making the K before E subject to 'palatalization', converting it to CH, like Middle English kirrke became church everywhere except Scotland. This change would convert snack to snatch, and a snack is something we often have to snatch. Both verbs refer to fast, unplanned actions. Around 1300 the word meant "to snap", as a dog might snap at someone. Our word is hardly a variant of snap, though odd things have happened over the course of the 5000 years since PIE, e.g. English courtesy > curtsy and fantasy > fancy. However, even if the origin of this word were snap, we know just as little about the origin of this word. (Now let's thank newcomer Mike Nichols of Columbus, Georgia, for serving today's Good Word snack.)
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David Myer
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Re: Snack

Postby David Myer » Sat Jul 30, 2022 4:03 am

So any ideas on whether snag (colloquialism for a sausage, in Australia at least) might be related? Maybe a snag on your jumper is related through the snatch connection, but what about sausages?

Philip Hudson
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Re: Snack

Postby Philip Hudson » Thu Aug 11, 2022 11:50 pm

This puts me in mind of the wiener or weenie. I don't eat the nauseating scraps of whatever comes from the bottom of the barrel. I have heard that in Frankfort they are called wieners and in Vienna they are called frankfurters. Nobody wants to claim them. Shades of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." You may recall in that book the mother, unbeknownst to herself, served sausage made out of her husband to her children. As I was wont to say in my misspent youth, "That's enough to gag a maggot."
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