Someday within the spring of 2003—earlier than Fb, Instagram, TikTok, and the iPhone, and across the similar time that the primary podcasts got here to be—I used to be listening to considered one of my favourite radio reveals, The Next Big Thing, which aired on WNYC and was syndicated by Public Radio Worldwide from 2000 to 2005. After they bought to a section referred to as “What’s Your Phrase?” during which listeners pitched phrases they thought must be within the dictionary to the present’s host, Dean Olsher, and lexicographer and Wordnik founder Erin McKean (who on the time was an editor on the New Oxford American Dictionary and Verbatim), I referred to as in with two food-related phrases that I assumed would be certain hits: “breastaurant” and “hangry.”
Historical past would show me proper about one of many phrases, however on the time, Olsher and McKean weren’t bought. I caught up with the 2 of them in Might of 2024—21 years after the section first aired on Might 9, 2003—to get their reflections on my phrases. We mentioned the very gradual after which very fast rise of “hangry,” which has been round since no less than the 1910s, however didn’t attain cultural saturation till round 2015 and solely made it into the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018, however can now be discovered printed on socks, T-shirts, tote luggage, and (after all) in magazines, newspapers, and web sites, with no rationalization wanted. Our dialogue of the 2 phrases additionally gives an enchanting (to this explicit phrase geek, anyway) look behind the scenes on the usually unpredictable means some phrases climb into common, dictionary-approved utilization and a few do not.
McKean additionally makes the wonderful level that print dictionaries have a motive to restrict their lexicon no less than partially due to the bodily nature of the product—within the digital age, there isn’t any want for such limits, and language can evolve far more shortly. Philosophy of language apart, poring by way of the archives of The Subsequent Large Factor to look again at previous predictions with the advantage of hindsight was a enjoyable train, which I extremely advocate when you could have a while to spare.
Skip to minute 37:55 within the episode “It’s Not Over” on the WNYC web site to hearken to the total Might 9, 2003 “What’s Your Phrase?” section or to 43:25 for simply my bit, or learn on for the transcript of my name, then proceed beneath for my latest Q&A with McKean and Olsher.
Pitching Hangry: Full 2003 Transcript
Dean: Hello, who’s this?
Megan: That is Megan Steintrager.
Dean: Megan, the place are you calling from?
Megan: I’m really calling from Yonkers, the place I work, and I reside in New York Metropolis.
Dean: And you’ve got a phrase for us?
Megan: I do. My phrase is “breastaurant.” [Erin and Dean laugh]
Dean: Like Hooters? Would Hooters be a breastaurant?
Megan: Yep, you bought it immediately. And my mom really got here up with this phrase, which I feel is fairly humorous. She was simply driving by and he or she stated, “Have you ever youngsters ever been to that breastaurant?” We had been all floored.
Dean: Is it spelled “b-r-e-s” or “b-r-e-a-s”?
Megan: I spell it “b-r-e-a-s.” I even have one other phrase if I can pitch that too.
Erin: What’s the opposite one?
Dean: Go for it!
Megan: It type of ties into breastaurant.
Erin: Please do not inform me it’s just like the male chain…
Megan: [Interrupts Erin] No, no, no, no. It is, uh, “hangry.”
Erin: Hangry?
Megan: Hangry.
Erin: Once you’re so hungry, you are simply prepared to tear somebody’s head off?
Megan: Precisely! It comes up quite a bit on street journeys, you recognize, when you’ll be able to’t discover anyplace to eat.
Dean: You’re getting so hangry…
Megan: Otherwise you’re caught in a gathering that is going by way of lunch.
Erin: Or that uncomfortable early night time, when it isn’t supper time but, but lunch was so very far-off.
Megan: Proper, sure. I had one boyfriend who all the time wished to exit for a drink earlier than dinner and so I’d be, like, secretly having a meal earlier than we went out in order that I did not change into hangry.
Dean: I’ve completely finished that. I am guessing that Megan’s gonna have a neater time with “breastaurant” than with “hangry,” proper?
Erin: I’m pondering that there is already a way for making phrases that imply anger linked to one thing. We now have “desk rage,” and “laptop rage,” and “street rage,” and “airplane rage.”
Megan: [sounding disappointed] Proper. So it’d be “starvation rage.”
Erin: Yeah.
Megan: [sounding defeated and resigned] Yeah.
Dean: Effectively hear, Megan, thanks very a lot.
Megan: Thanks.
Dean: Okay.
Megan: All proper.
Dean: Be nicely.
Megan: Bye.
As I discussed above, I not too long ago caught up with Olsher and McKean by way of electronic mail to ask them why they had been so positive that “hangry” wouldn’t be the massive success it’s change into. They had been nice sports activities about it. Learn on for the main points.
Megan: May you give slightly historical past/background of the “What’s Your Phrase?” section you hosted on the Subsequent Large Factor?
Erin: I went again and checked my electronic mail (I am a digital packrat, I maintain all the things) and it seems like I bought an electronic mail from Dean Olsher in January of 2002. At that time I would been working for Oxford College Press for a couple of 12 months and a half or so. He wished to do “one thing language associated” for the present, and we had a name and batted round some concepts. The primary section aired in April of 2002, I feel.
Megan: Once you heard my pitch of “hangry,” what was it that made you assume it wouldn’t take off? May you speculate on why you had the unique response you needed to my pitch?
Erin: I feel I’ll should borrow a well-known reply of Samuel Johnson’s right here and say, “Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance.” One of many issues I like about working with phrases is that generally we simply do not know why one phrase succeeds and one other fails, or why a phrase has a second of recognition after which falls from favor.
Once I was engaged on conventional dictionaries, our huge constraint was the scale of the printed ebook—so we had been extra in a mode of in search of causes NOT to incorporate a phrase.
Dean: Wow, we actually blew it on this one, did not we? I am stunned that I did not embrace the phrase wholeheartedly, as a result of it makes me consider a humorous reminiscence from school. Throughout my junior 12 months in France, I led an English dialog group on the American Library on the town. Someday a man stated: “Once I get up within the morning, I’m very indignant, and I hit quite a bit.” The remainder of us within the room exchanged nervous glances till we realized that he was hungry and ate quite a bit.
Megan: What’s it about “hangry” that you simply assume has caught on?
Erin: On reflection, I feel I underestimated how enjoyable it’s to say. It lends itself to exaggeration…”I am hangggggggry.”
Megan: In accordance with my analysis the earliest known use of hangry was in 1910. Why do you assume the phrase didn’t take off sooner, and even after I pitched it, after which grew to become so ubiquitous?
Erin: It is so arduous to say—that is completely a phrase that might have been used extra in speech and never made it into print (it’s totally casual). And the sorts of people that bought their writing printed had been for a very long time the type of people that virtually all the time had sufficient to eat, or who weren’t anticipated to be on diets. So maybe they simply did not ever get hangry. The citations within the OED are attention-grabbing in that of the 5 citations; two are about animals, and one is utilizing the phrase for instance of contraction; solely two are about folks, and each of these are after 2000.
Megan: What do you concentrate on hangry being added to the OED in 2018?
Erin: I am all for it! I imagine each phrase deserves a spot within the dictionary—the dictionary I work on now, Wordnik, has included ‘hangry’ since no less than Sept 2015, in accordance with the Wayback Machine.
Megan: Are there different meals phrases you’ll be able to keep in mind that you referred to as or didn’t name through the years?
Erin: None spring instantly to thoughts…
Dean: Effectively, this could solely be a meals phrase for zombies, however Erin as soon as assigned some arcane phrases to John Linnell to work right into a They Would possibly Be Giants music. That is how he ended up writing “Contrecoup,” which describes a kind of mind harm.
Megan: Any ideas on the subsequent hangry? I.e. what are some meals phrases which can be effervescent beneath the floor now and would possibly take off in 10 or 20 years?
Erin: I saved a quotation for “nutritionism” the opposite day, that means “the discount of meals to its macro- and micro-nutritional parts” (from the all the time attention-grabbing “Second Breakfast” publication). I am additionally seeing a number of references to “food noise” (fixed intrusive ideas about meals), particularly since semaglutide medication appear to show them off.
Korean meals phrases appear to be getting extra well-liked, from dishes comparable to tteokbokki, components like gochujang, and practices like mukbang movies.
I am additionally amused by “batchie” or “batch brew”—coffee brewed in large batches, versus single-serving pour-overs. All the pieces previous is new once more…
Megan: Now for the opposite phrase I pitched: What do you assume at the moment about “breastaurant?” Why hasn’t it taken off?
Erin: I feel as a result of it largely refers to 1 well-known chain, so…folks simply would use the identify of the chain. 🙂 We do include it in Wordnik, although, and have since 2015, with quite a lot of citations. So I would not name it a failure, it is simply not a high-frequency phrase.
Dean: To be sincere, whereas breastaurant did really feel like a contender 20+ years in the past, I feel we will have to attend for the Zeitgeist to come back round once more on that one.
The rest you’d like Severe Eats readers to find out about your work at the moment?
Erin: I by no means actually preferred being the bouncer on the dictionary nightclub…I wish to let all of the phrases in to bop! As of late I run Wordnik, a nonprofit, on-line English dictionary the place our aim is to incorporate all the phrases of English—together with the 52% of English words that aren’t included in traditional dictionaries. One of many methods folks can help the undertaking is by adopting their favourite phrases—I checked and “hangry” and “breastaurant” are each obtainable. 🙂
Dean: These days I am a music therapist. And I not too long ago launched my debut album! Letters of Transit is at deanolsher.bandcamp.com.
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