Snack

Snack (pronounced snak)

(1) A small portion of food or drink or a light meal, especially one eaten between regular meals.

(2) In the phrase “go snack”, to share profits or returns (archaic).

(3) In slang, someone physically attractive and sexually desirable (regionally limited).

(4) To have a snack or light meal, especially between regular meals:

1300–1350: From the Middle English verb snacchen, snacche, snache & snak & noun snacche, snak & snakee (to snap at, bite, seize (as of dogs) and cognate with the Middle Dutch snacken (to snap (as of dogs), from snakken and a variant of snappen (to snap)) and the Norwegian dialect snaka (to snatch (as of animals)).  In many European languages, snack is used in the same sense though in Swedish technically it’s deverbal of snacka (to chat, to talk).  The pleasing recent noun snackette is either (1) A small shop or kiosk selling snacks or (2) smaller than usual snacks (the word often used by dieters to distinguish their snacks from the more indulgent choices of others).  The synonyms include morsel, refreshment, bite, eats, goodies, nibble, pickings & tidbit.  Snack is a noun, adjective & verb, snacking and snacked are verbs; the noun plural is snacks.

Cadbury Snack.

The original Middle English verb (to bite or snap (as of dogs), probably came either from the Middle Dutch or Flemish snacken (to snatch, snap; chatter), the source of which is uncertain although one etymologist traces it to a hypothetical Germanic imitative root snu- used to form words relating to the snout or nose.  The sense of "having a bite to eat; a morsel or light meal” dates from 1807.  The noun snack (a snatch or snap (especially that of a dog) developed from the verb and emerged circa 1400.  The meaning extended to "a snappish remark" by the 1550s and "a share, portion, part" by the 1680s (hence the now archaic expression “go snacks” which meant "share, divide; have a share in").  The familiar modern meaning "a small dish morsel to eat hastily" was first noted in 1757.  The first snack bar (a place selling snacks) seems to have opened in 1923 and the similar (often smaller, kiosk-type operations) snackettes were a creation of US commerce in the 1940s.  Snack bars could be either stand-alone businesses or something operating within a stadium, theatre, cinema etc.  The commercial plural form snax was coined in 1942 for the vending machine trade and the term “snack table” has been in use since circa 1950.

Nestlé Salted Caramel Munchies.

Functionally (though not etymologically) related was munchies (food or snack) from 1959, the plural of the 1917 munchie (snack eaten to satisfy hunger) from the 1816 verb munch (to eat; to chew).  The familiar (to some) phrase “got the munchies” in the sense of "craving for food after smoking weed (marijuana)" was US stoner slang which was first documented in 1971 but Nestlé corporation’s Munchies weren’t an opportunistic attempt to grab the attention of weed smokers.  Munchies pre-date the slang use of the word by over a decade, introduced in 1957 by the Mackintosh company, Nestlé acquiring the brand in 1988 when it acquired Rowntree Mackintosh and it’s not known if the slang use can be attributed to some stoner coming back from the shop with a bag-full of the snacks and telling his grateful companions “I’ve got the Munchies”.  Munchies were originally milk chocolates with a caramel and biscuit centre but the range has in recent years proliferated to include centres of mint fondant, chocolate fudge, cookie dough and salted caramel.  The latest variation has been to use a white chocolate shell, this described as a “limited-edition” but it’s presumed if demand exists, it will become a standard line.

Stocking up: Lindsay Lohan buying snacks, London, 2008.

Nibble

Nibble (pronounced nib-uhl)

(1) To bite off small bits of something; to eat food by biting off small pieces.

(2) To bite, eat, or chew gently and in small amounts (often in the form “nibbled at”); to take dainty or tentative (especially when unsure of the taste) bites; an act or instance of nibbling.

(3) A small morsel of food.

(4) Snack food (allways (sweet or savory) in the plural as “nibbles” and usually served with drinks).

(5) In fishing, a response by a fish to the bait on a line (technically, the feeling of the fish tasting the bait but not yet “hooked”).

(6) In many contexts, a preliminary positive response or reaction such as an “expression of interest” to a proposal.

(7)  Of an idea or suggestion, tentatively or cautiously to consider.

(8) In moments of intimacy, sexually to stimulate a partner by the (gentle) use of the teeth on body parts (usually extremities) such as toes, finger tips, nipples or ear lobes, a subset of fetishists using this caressing as a prelude to acts such as biting, scratching or spanking.

(9) In computing, a unit of memory equal to half a byte, or four bits.

1425–1475: From the late Middle English nebillen (to peck away at, to sample, to take small bites) and thought related to the Middle Low German nibbelen (to gnaw; to pick with the beak), thus the presumption by most etymologists the word is probably of Dutch or Low German origin and akin to the modern Low German nibbeln (to gnaw), the Middle Dutch knibbelen (to gnaw) (and the source of the Dutch knibbelen (to cavail, squabble)) the Dutch nibbelen (to nibble) and the Saterland Frisian nibje (to nibble).  The noun (an act of nibbling) developed from the verb and appeared in the 1650s, extended in the mid nineteenth century to describe plates of "small bites or morsels.  The verb nosh came into use in New York in 1957 in the sense of “to snack between meals and was from the Yiddish nashn (nibble), from the Middle High German naschen, from the Old High German hnascon & nascon (to nibble), from the Proto-Germanic naskon & gnaskon.  The forms noshed & noshing soon emerged in casual use although “the nosh” had been used in the US military as a noun since 1917, meaning “a mess or canteen”; it was a clipping of “nosh-house” which in civilian slang described restaurants & cafés.  Nibble is a noun & verb, nibbled is a verb & adjective, nibbler is a noun, nibbling is a noun & verb and nibbleable & nibbly & nibblish are adjectives (although not all dictionaries list them as standard forms); the noun plural is nibbles.

Nibbles could also be described as tidbits (often wrongly used as titbits), bites, tastes, or crumbs.  In idiomatic use, “to get a nibble” is (analogous with a fish tentatively tasting the bait before swallowing the hook) to receive a response to an offer, suggestion, idea, advertisement etc.  “To nibble away at” describes processes similar to those illustrated by phrases such as “straw which broke the camel’s back” or “death of a thousand cuts”.  Rust for example “nibbles away” at metal and inflation “nibbles away” at savings and the value of money (unlike hyperinflation which, depending on the its extent, is better described as a process of erosion, decimation, destruction etc).  As a verb to nibble is also to find petty faults or make needlessly pedantic points.

Lindsay Lohan nibbling on a slice of watermelon.

In computing, a nibble was a unit of memory equal to half a byte, or four bits, it’s origin apparently in the late 1950s among the IBM engineers developing the mainframe architecture for the System 360 (the S/360, 1964), the fundamentals of which remain in use even now.  Engineers do have a sense of humor and “nibble” was chosen to represent half a byte, based on the homophony of byte and bite although more serious types (and there were a lot of them about at IBM) preferred half-byte or tetrade (“a group of four things”, from the Ancient Greek τετράς (tetrás)) and by the time the concept ended up in the hands of networking and communications engineers, it could also be a semi-octet, quartet or quadbit.  More linguistically adventurous types coined nybble as an alternative spelling (a tribute to the spelling of byte) and this encouraged others who developed a protocol for the exchange executed with four-bit packets which they labeled nabble, a nod to “babble”.  The word babble, despite the common belief, is unrelated to the Latin Babel, from Biblical Hebrew בָּבֶל‎ (bāḇel) (Babylon) and was from the Middle English babelen, from the Old English bæblian (which existed also as wæflian (foolishly to talk), from the Proto-West Germanic bablōn & wablōn, variants of babalōn, from the Proto-Germanic babalōną (to chatter), from a variety of primitive Indo-European sources which were various ways of expressing the idea of vague speech or mumbling, all of which etymologist suspect were onomatopoeic mimicking of the infantile sounds of babies, something forms appear in just about every known European language.

Lindsay Lohan at a table of nibbles.

In the early days of computing when memory of all types was expensive (and sometimes actually rare), nibbles were helpful because four-bit architecture was an economical way to implement processes and many of the early microprocessors, of which the Intel 4004 (1971) is probably the best remembered because it was the core of so many pocket calculators and despite the enormous advances during the last half-century, 4-bit microcontrollers remain in use, simply because something like a basic washing machine demands nothing more.  The programmers of the early mainframes were demanding more but the hardware to handle that didn’t then exist and the nibble was the optimal way to ensure the most characters could be contained in a given number of bytes, making computations faster and debugging easier although, in a classic work-around, some “nibbles” did grow to 8 bits, the trick invoked to add functionality while maintaining backward computability but the increasing muscularity of hardware soon rendered the approach obsolete.

Crooked Hillary Clinton, nibbling.

The noun nibbler means (1) someone who nibbles, (2) a tool for cutting sheet metal and (3) a fish of the sea chub subfamily Girellinae and (4) a technique for duplicating copying protected floppy diskettes.  Copy-protected diskettes were common in the 1980s and were an attempt by software developers to prevent privacy.  When programs were distributed in a multi-diskette pack, it was common practice to have copy protection applied to only one, this being the one required to undertake an installation or make the software operative; it was essentially the same idea as “product activation” in the internet age.  As an additional layer, some manufacturers would include a counter on an installation diskette which would permit the product to be installed only a set number of times.  The idea behind the name was that the hacks “nibbled away” at the security layer(s) and examples included CopyIIPC & CopyIIAT (for low & double (160-180-320-360-720 kB) & high (1.2-1.44 MB) density diskettes respectively and Fast Hack 'Em.  It was something of a power race because within hours of Microsoft introducing a proprietary 1.7 MB format in an attempt to defeat the pirates, hacks & cracks appeared on the bulletin boards.

Joe Biden "nibbling" and a fish nibbling on the dead skin cells of feet. 

In July 2023, Joe Biden (b 1942; US president since 2021) was observed at a public event “nibbling” on the jumpsuit of an infant girl being held in her moth’s arms.  Fox News, on the spot to record the nibble, claimed the unfortunate child was “scared” and while that may or may not be true, she certainly seemed not best pleased.  Fox News though were right that it was definitely a nibble and nibblin’ Joe used exactly the same action as the small (and presumably grateful) fish which live out their lives feasting on the dead skin cells of the feet of folk who pay a small sum to sit for a while and be nibbled.  For fish and us, it's a win-win situation.

Joe Biden and his wife Dr Jill Biden (b 1951) at a campaign stop, Council Bluffs, Iowa, 30 November, 2019.

Nibblin’ Joe had of course been seen before, photos of him enjoying his wife’s fingers circulating in December 2019 at the start of his No Malarkey bus tour laying out the groundwork for his campaign in the Democratic Party’s Iowa presidential caucuses the following February.  Whether the sight of him nibbling her fingers was responsible for his poor showing in the caucuses isn’t known but despite Pete Buttigieg (b 1982) gaining twice his support in Iowa, the nomination for 2020 was ultimately secured by Mr Biden (with the odd nudge from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) which had decided they’d prefer to contest an election with someone who possibly was senile than with anyone who definitely was gay).

He was of course well known for being sniffin’ Joe, photographs of him leaning in, apparently to “sniff” the hair of women and girls (some young enough to be his great-granddaughters) circulating widely in the run-up to the 2020 election.  It was all very strange because it was such unusual behavior.  Had photographs appeared of a man of his age doing such things behind closed doors, it would have been a textbook case of public moral outrage but do so in public, knowing press and television cameras were focused on him and that sometimes the parents of the children were present, suggested a naïve innocence rather than anything distasteful.  Still, it was strange enough for the party hierarchy to discuss the matter with him and in a public statement, he acknowledged “things have changed” over the years and such tactility was no longer acceptable.  “I get it” he said.  Given the obvious discomfort displayed by some of the women sniffed, one might have thought he should have “got it” sooner.

Joe Biden and crooked Hillary Clinton, Scranton Airport, Pennsylvania, July 2016.

He’s also huggin’ Joe.  In July 2016, the greatest interest crooked Hillary Clinton (then in peak pantsuit mode) had in Joe Biden was thinking of some way he could be persuaded to serve as her secretary of state (foreign minister) once she’d enjoyed her landslide victory over Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021).  That may have accounted for the warmth of the welcome she offered when she waited at the bottom of the stairs to meet him at Scranton airport, Pennsylvania.  However, perhaps overcome with emotion (Scranton his childhood home), the hug she offered lingered longer than she would have liked, huggin’ Joe hanging on for some fifty seconds despite her twice “tapping out” (a double tap on the arm, the accepted non-verbal code to indicate a release is requested) and even trying to wriggle free from his grasp didn’t work.

Should the 2024 US presidential contest descend again to Biden vs Trump (something a majority of Americans seem resigned to rather than enthusiastic about), Mr Trump will again have to decide which moniker best suits his opponent.  In 2020 he used “sleepy Joe”, the unsubtle message denoting someone in advanced cognitive decline who was apt to need frequently to nap.  At the time, there were memes around the hair sniffing photographs using “creepy Joe” and it may have been tempting but Mr Trump’s own documented history of ungentlemanly conduct with women may have led his advisors to suggest he avoid casting that stone.  On that basis, “sniffin’ Joe”, “huggin’ Joe” and “nibblin Joe” are probably out too so it’s either stick with “sleepy Joe” or think of something new.  Whatever his flaws, Mr Trump has a good record of avoiding issues with narcotics and alcohol so the well publicized problems of Hunter Biden (b 1970) might offer some possibilities given the recent discovery of cocaine in the White House although there’s said to be no evidence linking the substance with any member of the Biden family.  In the run-up to the 2020 election he’d used “Basement Biden”, “Beijing Biden” & “Slow Joe” but none really captured the imagination in the way of “crooked Hillary”, “low energy Jeb”, “little Marco”, “mini Mike”, “Lying Ted” or “Fauxcahontas” (although the last one was coined by someone else and Mr Trump usually preferred “Pocahontas”).  He does of course have other matters to think about but the task will have been allocated to staff and it’ll be interesting to see if they conjure up anything fun.

Lunch

Lunch (pronounced luhnch)

(1) A light midday meal between breakfast and dinner; luncheon.

(2) Any light meal or snack.

(3) To eat lunch.

(4) In slang, as “out to lunch”, dim, vague, uselessly ineffectual.

(5) In slang as “lunchy”, old-fashioned; passé; out of style (obsolete).

(6) In slang as “eating their lunch”, outwitting an opponent.

(7) In Caribbean slang (among older folk), mid afternoon tea.

(8) In first-class cricket, the break in play between the first and second sessions (confusingly for those new to cricket, although the first session is often called the "pre-lunch session", the second is known as the "lunch session" and not the "post lunch session").

(9) In Minnesota, USA, any small meal, especially one eaten at a social gathering.

1580:  It’s never been clear which came first: lunch or luncheon.  Origin of both is thought to lie in a dissimilated variant of nuncheon, the Middle English nonechenche (noon ling meal and drink), equivalent to none (noon) + schench (from the Old English scenc or scencan (to pour out, give drink)), cognate with the Dutch and German schenken.  Apparent unrelated, Old English had nonmete (afternoon meal, literally "noon-meat").  Nonechenche was possibly altered by the northern English dialect lunch (hunk of bread or cheese) from 1590 which may be from lump or the Spanish lonja (slice, literally “loin”).  Because dinner in the sense of the biggest or main meal of the day) could be eaten either at around noon, in the evening or at night, there was a need for a meal to fill the gap between breakfast and dinner.  Lunch is a noun & verb, luncher is a noun, lunching is a noun & verb and lunched is a verb; the noun plural is lunches.

A montage of a languid Lindsay Lohan lingering over lunch.

The idea of lunch as it’s now understood took a long time to evolve, to “take a lunch” in 1786 is recorded as eating a chunk of something (perhaps evolved from lump), carved sufficiently large to constitute a filling meal and as late as 1817, the US Webster’s Dictionary offered as the only definition of lunch "a large piece of food", a meaning long obsolete and in the 1820s, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) thought it either “a vulgarism or a fashionable affectation".   Nevertheless, lunch’s intrusion into the language in the nineteenth century does suggest some sort of social change was afoot, either in the type, style or timing of meals or at least the words used to describe them.  Lunch-money was attested from 1868; lunch-time from 1821; lunch hour from 1840 and the lunch-break from 1960.  The slang phrase out to lunch in the sense of “a bit vague, dim, clueless (but some way short of actually insane) was first recorded in recorded 1955, the notion of being "not there" and instead at lunch.  The luncheon voucher was a public health measure, introduced in 1946 by the UK’s post-war Labour government (1945-1951).  It was literally a paper voucher which represented the mechanism by which the government would subsidize midday meals taken in private restaurants by employees in workplaces where there was no staff canteen.  Luncheon vouchers were an attempt to improve the national diet by encouraging the consumption of healthy, nutritious food at a time when so many basic items were still subject to the rationing imposed during wartime (indeed, some foodstuffs were subject to rationing only after the conflict ceased).  In an example of bureaucratic inertia, the scheme existed to an extent until 2013 by which time the effects of inflation had made the by then trivial subsidy inconsequential.

Receptacles in which to store one’s lunch for transport have a history.  The lunch-box is documented from 1864, the lunch-pail from 1891.  Those were descriptive nouns whereas lunch-bucket emerged in the 1990s as an adjective indicating working-class men or values, bucket presumably the best word because it was universally understood in the English-speaking world to an extent pail was not.  Lunch-bag seems never to have become a common form despite being widely used but in the 1970s, the verb brown-bag (and the related brown-bagging) referring to bringing lunch or liquor in a brown paper bag.  A long-time staple of a lunch-pail’s contents, lunch-meat (a processed form of meat-based protein produced in a size which, when sliced, was aligned with the slices of standard loaves of bread and thus convenient for making sandwiches) was first documented in 1931.  The lunch-counter (a long, elevated table or bench where customers eat standing or sitting on high stools) is an 1854 invention of US English.

The possible future of lunch: Grilled jellyfish.  Although many fish species are in decline, jellyfish numbers are growing.  The part eaten for lunch is called the umbrella. 

The portmanteau word brunch dates from circa 1890, a British student slang merging of breakfast and lunch, according to the magazine Punch (1 August 1896).  It appeared in 1895 in the defunct Hunter's Weekly, but two years earlier, at the University of Oxford, the students had drawn what must at the time have seemed an important distinction: The combination-meal, when nearer the usual breakfast hour, is "brunch" and, when nearer luncheon, is "blunch".  That’s a linguistic curiosity in that the brunch survived while blunch did not yet the modern understanding of a brunch appears to be something taken closer to the time of lunch than breakfast.  It may be that brunch was just the more pleasingly attractive word, blunch not so well rolling off the tongue.  Several spellings of luncheon were noted in the decades after the 1640s, the now standardised form not widespread until 1706.  Of uncertain origin, in the 1580s was used to describe something like the northern English dialectal lunch (hunk of bread or cheese), though influenced by the Spanish lonja (a slice, literally "loin"), blended with or influenced by nuncheon, from the mid-fourteenth century Middle English nonechenche, (light mid-day meal), from none (noon) + schench (drink), from the Old English scenc, from scencan (pour out).

The possible future of lunch: Fishcakes.  Fishcakes are a way by-products of the industrial processing of seafood can be sold as a protein source (ie make use of what would be otherwise used for agricultural feed, the pet-food business or end up a waste product.

The etymology of all these words is tangled and there are reasons to suspect the similar forms arose independently in different place rather than as forks of anything vaguely lineal, the OED discounting the notion of lunching, which dates from the 1650s, being derived from the verb lunch because that wasn’t to be attested for another century, the OED suggesting there may be some connection (by analogy) with words like truncheon etc to simulate a French origin which is speculative but such things are not unknown in ever class-conscious England.  Whatever the origin, it does seem to have been used to describe an early afternoon meal eaten by those who take dinner at noon.

Crisp

Crisp (pronounced krisp)

(1) Hard but easily breakable; brittle (applied especially to food).

(2) Firm and fresh; not soft or wilted (applied especially to food).

(3) Brisk; sharp; clear; decided (applied often to the delivery of words).

(4) Lively; pithy; sparkling.

(5) Clean-cut, neat, and well-pressed; well-groomed.

(6) Invigorating; bracing (usually of the air).

(7) Crinkled, wrinkled, or rippled, as skin or hair.

(8) A snack food, made usually from thinly sliced potato (called chips in some markets).

(9) In cooking, a dessert of fruit, as apples or apricots, baked with a crunchy mixture, usually of breadcrumbs, chopped nutmeats, butter, and brown sugar.

(10) In computing theory, not using fuzzy logic; based on a binary distinction between true and false.

(11) In wine criticism, having a refreshing amount of acidity; having less acidity than green wine, but more than a flabby one.

Pre 900: From the Middle English crisp (curly), from the Old English crisp (curly, crimped, wavy" (of hair, wool etc)), from the Latin crispus (curled, uneven, wrinkled; having curly hair); a doublet of crêpe, crispus was from the primitive Indo-European sker- & ker- (to turn, bend) and cognate with crīnis & crista.  The Old French crespir is related but the English forms came via Latin.  Crisp is a noun, verb & adjective, crisply is an adverb, crisper & crispest are adjectives, crisped & crisping are verbs and crispness & crispation ((1) The act or process of curling, or the state of being curled or (2) a slight twitch of a muscle (both archaic)) are nouns.

The sense of "brittle" may have run in parallel with other meanings but wasn’t recorded until the 1520s and didn’t become a commonly used form until the early nineteenth century, the reason for the sixteenth century evolution unknown but presumably based on the characteristics assumed by certain foods when cooked.  The figurative use to describe something (usually someone) having a "neat, brisk, having a fresh appearance" dates from 1814 and the use to speak of air as “chilly or bracing" apparently didn’t appear until 1869, perhaps surprising give the way earlier romantic poets trawled the language for adjectives.  As a noun, crisp was used from the mid-fourteenth century, originally the name of a light, crinkly material formerly used for kerchiefs, veils etc and a few decades later it was applied to a kind of pastry and by the 1820s, it was a common form of speech by cooks (often a jocular euphemism for "burned to a crisp") to describe anything over-cooked.  Potato crisps, although recipes were circulating in the US as early as 1824, first went on sale in 1897, marketed simply as crisps by 1935 although, in the US, crisps began in 1903 to be used in trade names of breakfast cereals.  The verb crisp (to curl, to twist into short, stiff waves or ringlets (of the hair, beard, mane etc)) was a late fourteenth century derivation from either the adjective or else from the Old French crespir or the Latin crispare, both forms from adjectives.  It was use to mean "to become brittle" after 1805.  The adjective crispy dates from the late fourteenth century in the sense of "curly" and from the 1610s it could also mean "brittle".

Crisps, chips and freedom fries

Smith's "limited edition" Lamington chips, 2020.  The market reaction ensured the edition stayed limited.

The English call them crisps which Australians and New Zealanders once also did but the colonies have long instead called them chips.  They’re called chips also in the US and Canada where it makes sense because what the English call chips, they call French fries which, in the antipodes are called chips.  Despite Australians calling both French fries and crisps “chips”, folk seem not confused, life going on as people adjusting as circumstances dictate.  In Australia, as late as 2003, Smiths still called their chips “crisps” but, bowing to the vernacular, they changed and they’re now definitively “chips”.

About the only place where the names of fried potato snacks proved linguistically controversial was the US when, in the run-up to 2003 invasion of Iraq, after finding the French support for the action insufficiently enthusiastic, the chairman of the committee in charge of operations in the Capitol complex ordered the word "French" removed from all menus, French fries becoming freedom fries and French toast, freedom toast.  It was an echo of one of Washington’s earlier linguistic assaults when, upon the entry of the US to the war in 1917 (which was the act which saw it in 1919 named The World War), German measles had been dubbed liberty measles, hamburgers had become liberty steaks and sauerkraut, liberty cabbage.  Then, even German shepherd dogs had been thought subversive and thus re-named Alsatians although there's no record of the Bush White House taking action against French poodles.  From the Quay d'Orsay, the French Foreign Ministry seemed unimpressed, noting they weren’t devoting much attention to potatoes and that French fries were anyway invented in Belgium in the seventeenth century.  In Washington DC, quietly in 2006 the name changes were reversed.

Stocking up on chips: Lindsay Lohan buying Doritos Nacho Cheese chips and other essential groceries, Los Angeles, 2008.  It's not known if her fondness for Doritos (Doritos the singular, plural and collective form, a single chip being "a Doritos chip") was formed or strengthened by them being on the product-placement list for Mean Girls (2004).

Stocking up on crisps: Lindsay Lohan with former special friend, Samantha Ronson, London, 2008.

Technically and legally, Pringles are not potato chips.  In the snack business the Pringle is a curious outlier because although it looks like a potato chip and most consumers probably think of it as one, the word "chip" appears nowhere on the product packaging or the marketing material.  The company used to use the word but, because Pringles are actually dehydrated potato flakes pressed into their distinctive parabolic shape rather than thin slices of potato, other manufacturers objected and the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) agreed, ruling they couldn't be described as "chips".  Procter & Gamble (which then produced Pringles) thought about it and eventually settled on "potato crisp", a label which was continued when in 2012 the brand was sold to the Kellogg Company.  Introduced in 1968, Pringles are popular with many because they are less greasy than the traditional potato chip (or crisp in some markets).  They're produced by combining dehydrated potato flakes with a mix of corn flour, wheat starch & rice flour to which is added a blend of vegetable oils, seasonings, and additives to form a dough which is rolled into thin sheets and cut into the signature shape.  The cut forms are then fried and coated with a layer of seasoning before being packaged in the famous tubular canister.

Sandwich

Sandwich (pronounced sand-wich)

(1) Two or more slices of bread or the like with a layer of meat, fish, cheese, etc between each pair.

(2) To insert something between two other things.

(3) A type of engineering or construction where flat materials are joined in layers.

1762.  Named after John Montagu (1718-1792), Fourth Earl Sandwich, a bit of a gambler who, during marathon sessions at the tables, would eat slices of cold meat between bread rather than rise for a meal.  However, the earl’s biographer suggested his subject was a serious chap, committed to the navy, politics and the arts and the sandwiches were actually eaten at his desk at the Admiralty but the legend is much preferred.  It was in his honor Captain James Cook (1728-1779) named the Hawaiian Sandwich islands in 1778 when Montagu was First Lord of the Admiralty.  The family name is from the place in Kent which in the Old English was Sandwicæ (sandy harbor; trading center).  In structural linguistics, a "sandwich" word is one in which two or more syllables have been split (al la slices of bread) and filled with another word.  Use of the technique is common and exemplified by an opinion such as: "Fox News is just Murdoch propafuckinganda".  The term was coined by US lexicographer Dr Harold Wentworth (1904-1965).  

There is doubt whether the sandwich became so-named as early as 1762 because the first documented account of the Earl’s culinary innovation was written in 1770 but it certainly caught on.  The sandwich board, the two-sided mobile advertising carried on the shoulders, is from 1864.  The Wall Street Journal once described the sandwich as "Britain's biggest contribution to gastronomy" but, given the parlous reputation of the rest of their cuisine, the WSJ may have been damning with faint praise.  Regardless, while Sandwich may have lent his name, the historical record suggests sandwiches have been eaten since bread was first baked, pre-dating the earl by thousands of years.

Portrait of John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich (1783) by Thomas Gainsborough (c 1727-1788), National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

John Montagu was one of the more interesting chaps to sit in the House of Lords.  Rich and well-connected, he was a libertine in the milieu of the aristocratic debauchery of the eighteenth century, his country house described by a contemporary as “the scene of our youthful debaucheries, the retreat of your hoary licentiousness.”  There’s never been any suggestion Sandwich was more depraved than many of his companions in self-indulgence but he certainly fitted-in.

In his lifetime, the earl’s fame came not from the eponymous snack but his long affair with Miss Martha Ray (1746-1779), a most becoming and talented young singer.  It’s never been known when first they made friends but she lived with him as his mistress from the age of seventeen (he was then forty-five), the relationship producing nine children.  The concubinage of Miss Ray he  enjoyed while his wife was suffering from mental illness and while it’s not recorded if her condition was in any way related to her husband’s conduct, given he conducted an affair also with his sister-in-law, there must be some suspicion.

Montagu's behavior attracted the interest of many, including John Wilkes, a prominent satirist who wrote a number of pieces critical of the earl’s politics and ridiculing his (not so) private life.  Montagu’s revenge was swift.  Wilkes didn’t write only publicly-published satire, he also had a small circle of socially elite subscribers to his other literary output.  That was pornography, and the earl was a subscriber.  To discredit Wilkes, Lord Sandwich rose in the House of Lords and read extracts from Wilkes’ The Essay on Women which he prefaced by telling their lordships “…it was so full of filthy langue (sic) as well as the most horrid blasphemies”.  The earl did not exaggerate and even today the words would shock and appall their lordships although it must be admitted, it's always been a place where members easily are appalled.

The vengeance backfired.  The House of Lords ruled his speech a breach of procedure which sounds a mild rebuke but in that place it was a damning censure.  It also provoked Wilkes who responded with tales of Sandwich’s “debauchery, miserliness and lack of good faith” and a biography published in the 1760s labelled him “an arsonist and thief”.  His reputation never recovered.

Portrait of Martha Ray by Nathaniel Dance-Holland  (1735–1811)

Miss Ray’s end was sadder still.  Sandwich gave her a generous allowance and obtained a flat in Westminster so she had somewhere to live during those times when, for whatever reason, she couldn’t stay in his house.  He also introduced her to a young soldier, James Hackman (circa 1752-1779) who became obsessed with her and soon turned into what would now be called a stalker.  In 1779, Hackman resigned his commission to join the church and it seems he and Ms Ray may have had a brief liaison but she declined his offers of marriage, apparently because she thought his social status and financial means inadequate.  Not handling rejection well, Hackman remained infatuated, become increasingly jealous and continued the pursuit.

One evening in April 1779, he followed her to the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden where he shot her dead, apparently under the impression she had taken another lover, which may or may not have been true.  Immediately after the murder, Hackman attempted suicide but succeeded only in wounding himself and was arrested.  Two days after she was buried, the Reverend Hackman was sentenced to be hanged and within the week he died on the Tyburn gallows at a public execution before “a large crowd”.

With Lindsay Lohan on location in Ireland for the shooting of the film Irish Wish, Westport Café The Creel created a sandwich to note the event.  The Lindsay LoHam includes 'nduja sausage, Monterey Jack cheese, mixed grated cheddar, caramelized onions and, naturally enough given the name, ham.  The film is scheduled for release in 2023; the sandwich is available for a limited season.

Sandwich is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, its population 20,675 at the last census.  It is the oldest town on Cape Cod and in 2014, Sandwich turned 375 years old.  Sandwich has a police department.  They are the Sandwich Police.

One noted concoction is the muffuletta, a thick, round sandwich similar to a hero, typically containing ham, salami, and cheeses and topped with an olive salad, a specialty of New Orleans.  It seems first to have been served in the late 1960s, the name from the Sicilian dialect, from the Italian muffoletta (a round hollow-centered loaf of bread), from muffola (mitten), from the French moufle.  In New Orleans, among the muffuletta cognoscenti, there is a heated faction and a room-temperature faction.

Fluff

Fluff (pronounced fluhf)

(1) Light, downy particles, as of cotton.

(2) A soft, light, downy mass.

(3) In slang, a cloth diaper (nappy).

(4) In slang (New England region in the US), marshmallow crème, thus the local delicacy the “fluffernutter” (a sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow fluff), once a favorite of children’s school lunches but now likely to attract “mother shaming” on Instagram.

(5) In LGBTQQIAAOP slang, the passive partner in a lesbian relationship, known also as a “ruffle”.

(6) In slang, (Australia, New Zealand, Canada), a fart.

(7) In the slang of pop-culture fandom, fan fiction which (in whole or in part) is “sweet and feel-good” in tone, usually involving romance.

(8) In the slang (UK) of the role-playing game community, a form of role-playing which is inconsequential and not related to the plot and used sometimes in the context of (but not limited to) filling time.

(9) In UK slang short change deliberately given by a railway clerk (keeping the money for themselves), an example of a “deliberate fluff” (obsolete).

(10) Figuratively, something of no consequence; insubstantial.

(11) Figuratively (of literature, political argument, philosophy et al), a slight work or one of dubious artistic or intellectual value; unscholarly (used also as a polite euphemism for “bullshit (BS)” which is less explicit than “cattle feces” (“cattle faeces in non-US English).

(12) An error (flub, lapse, blooper, blunder, boo-boo, defect, error, fault, faux pas, gaffe, lapse, mistake, slip, stumble, brain-fart, brain-explosion), especially an actor's memory lapse in the delivery of lines (often in the form “fluffed their lines”.

(13) A young woman (often as “a bit of fluff”), the implication being of her providing a brief, amusing diversion rather than one sought for a permanent relationship)

(14) To make into fluff; shake or puff out (feathers, hair etc) into a fluffy mass (often followed by up).

(15) To make a mistake.

(16) To become fluffy; move, float, or settle down like fluff.

1780s: From the earlier (or perhaps contemporary) floow (woolly substance, down, nap, lint (which appeared also as flough, flue & flew)), possibly from the West Flemish vluwe (an imitative modification of floow), of uncertain origin but which may be from the French velu (hairy, furry), from the Latin villūtus (having shaggy hair), from villus (shaggy hair, tuft of hair) and may be compared with the Old English flōh (that which is flown off, fragment, piece), linked to the later “flaw”.  Although undocumented, etymologists generally conclude the word may have been a blend of flue +‎ puff.  “Fluffy stuff” is a common phenomenon in the natural world and descriptors existed in many European languages including the possibly onomatopoeic Middle Dutch vloe, the dialectal English floose, flooze & fleeze (particles of wool or cotton; fluff; loose threads or fibres), the Danish fnug (down, fluff) and the Swedish fnugg (speck, flake).  Traces of the sound of the word “fluff” are found in other languages including the Japanese フワフワ (fuwafuwa) (lightly, softly), the Hungarian puha (soft, fluffy), the Polish puchaty (soft, fluffy) and the Romanian puf (down; peachfuzz; soft hair of some animals; powderpuff).  Fluff & fluffing are nouns & verbs, fluffed is a verb, fluffiness & fluffer are nouns, fluffless & flufflike are adjectives, fluffy is an adjective (and non-standard) noun and fluffily is an adverb; the noun plural is fluffs.

Fluffied: Lindsay Lohan in bikini embellished with faux fur, photo-shoot for the fifth anniversary of ODDA magazine, April 2017.

In idiomatic use there’s “fluff around” of “fluff about” (ineffectually to act or waste time”, “fluff off” (an affectionate form of “fuck off”), “fluff-ball” or “ball of fluff” (a fluffy kitten or puppy with the quality of “cuteness”), “bum fluff” or “belly-button fluff” (small particles the fabric of clothing which accumulates in body crevices), “fluffhead” (someone vague or confused (synonymous with “airhead”), “fluff up” (a polite version of “fuck up”).  The term “fluffy bunny” isn’t from lagomorphology (the scientific study of rabbits (small mammals in the family Leporidae)) although it may be assumed it’s often heard in pet shops.  Fluffy bunny (also as “fluff bunny” & “fluffbunny”) was an adaptable noun used to mean: (1) a synonym of chubby bunny (a competitive eating game in which contestants had to pronounce words or phrases (such as “Irish wristwatch”) while holding increasing numbers of marshmallows is their mouth), (2) in the strange world of quantum mechanics, quantum entanglement which in theory can occur in theory never arises because of other physics and (3) a derogatory descriptor of a casual, naive practitioner of Wicca (or other neo-pagan religion), especially one deemed to have only a superficial understanding.  The slang “bit of fluff” (young woman with who one is enjoying or planning a brief affair) was first recorded in 1903 while the use to describe marshmallow confection seems to date from at least 1920, noted in Massachusetts.  The verb in the sense of “to shake into a soft mass” was in use by 1875 (directly from the noun) while the meaning “make a mistake” dates from 1884 as theater slang to refer to acts who had forgotten their lines.  The adjective fluffy (containing or resembling fluff) came into use in the 1820s.

Watergate Fluff

Watergate fluff is one of the alternative terms for the dish “Watergate Salad”, the others including Green Fluff, Green Goddess, Fluff Salad and Funeral Salad, the last picked up reputedly because it was so often served at wakes.  It’s not clear how the culinary delight came to be called “Watergate Salad” although there’s no doubt the use was triggered by some association the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s which revolved around attempts by the administration of Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) to “cover up” the involvement of operatives connected to the White House with the break-in in June 1972 of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in Washington DC’s Watergate Building.  Interestingly, although the scandal (in the public perception although the legal proceedings would last longer) ended in August 1974 when Nixon resigned, the first known use of the term “Watergate Salad” dates from 1975 although in September 1974, Maryland's Hagerstown Daily Mail had published the recipe for “Watergate Cake”, also a similarly green-tinted dessert made with pistachio pudding in the mix and sometimes the icing.

The dish however predates the term.  Some claim the Kraft Foods Corporation deserves credit (apparently as a proud boast rather than an admission of guilt) as the creator because in 1975 they published a recipe called “Pistachio Pineapple Delight” as part of a promotional campaign to support the release that year of their “Pistachio Pudding Mix” (something with a long tradition, a whipped cream and pineapple concoction detailed in a Kansas newspaper in 1913, the year Richard Nixon was born).  At that point, history and myth become hard to separate, one story saying the food editor of the Chicago Tribune named it to stimulate interest, suggesting it was the ideal snack to enjoy while watching the televised hearings of proceedings pursuant to the scandal while another claimed it was associative because the Watergate Hotel (in the infamous building) served the salad on their popular weekend buffets; no menus appear to have survived to prove or disprove that one.  Best of was the link was because the salad was “full of nuts” (like the crew involved in the scandal, including the memorable lawyer and Watergate conspirator & burglary coordinator G Gordon Liddy (1930–2021) who wasn’t really “a nut” but is often portrayed as one).  True or not, that’s the one which deserves to be accepted.

Aleita Dupree's Watergate Salad recipe

Ingredients

1 (3 ½ oz) box of instant pistachio pudding mix.
1 (20 oz) can of crushed pineapple with juice (most use sweetened).
1 (8 oz) container of cool whip, thawed.
1 heaped cup of miniature marshmallows.
½ cup of chopped pecan nuts.
Stemmed maraschino cherries for garnish (optional).

Instructions

(1) In glass serving bowl, mix crushed pineapple and juice with pistachio pudding mix.  Stir pudding until mix completely is dissolved and mixture is smooth.

(2) Fold in the thawed cool whip.  Gently fold until pudding and cool whip is completely blended.

(3) Add miniature marshmallows and pecans.  Cover and chill until salad is set (should take up to 30 minutes).

(4) To serve, garnish with stemmed cherries and extra chopped pecans (if desired).

Fluff in fashion

Fluffiness in fashion: Lindsay Lohan in Falling for Christmas (Netflix, 2022, left) and in New York to promote Irish Wish (Netflix, 2024, right).  The fluffy cream coat is by David Koma (Davit Komakhidze (Georgian: დავით კომახიძე); b 1985)) a London-based, Georgian-born fashion designer (the label of his fashion house is stylized as DΛVID KOMΛ).  The crystal payette-embroidered layered cup bra hints at the profile of the customer base; it’s on sale at US$1250 (down from US$1750).  The fashion business is regarded by some as a bit “fluffy” (frocks and such) compared with “hard” industries such as heavy engineering or nuclear weapons construction but the annual turnover of the global fashion industry is substantial.  The numbers bounce around a bit because it difficult to determine where “fashion” ends and “commodities” begin but estimates between US$1.5-2.5 trillion are widely quoted (In financial use, one trillion = 1,000,000,000,000 (one million million or 1,000 billion)).