Sooner or later within the spring of 2003—earlier than Fb, Instagram, TikTok, and the iPhone, and across the identical time that the primary podcasts got here to be—I used to be listening to certainly one of my favourite radio reveals, The Subsequent Huge Factor, which aired on WNYC and was syndicated by Public Radio Worldwide from 2000 to 2005. After they bought to a phase referred to as “What’s Your Phrase?” wherein 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 ensure hits: “breastaurant” and “hangry.”

Historical past would show me proper about one of many phrases, however on the time, Olsher and McKean weren’t offered. I caught up with the 2 of them in Might of 2024—21 years after the phase first aired on Might 9, 2003—to get their reflections on my phrases. We mentioned the very sluggish after which very fast rise of “hangry,” which has been round since not 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 clarification wanted. Our dialogue of the 2 phrases additionally gives a captivating (to this specific phrase geek, anyway) look backstage on the typically 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 not less than partly due to the bodily nature of the product—within the digital age, there isn’t any want for such limits, and language can evolve way more rapidly. Philosophy of language apart, poring via the archives of The Subsequent Huge Factor to look again at previous predictions with the advantage of hindsight was a enjoyable train, which I extremely suggest 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 take heed to the complete Might 9, 2003 “What’s Your Phrase?” phase 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 dwell 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 straight away. And my mom really got here up with this phrase, which I believe is fairly humorous. She was simply driving by and he or she stated, “Have you ever children 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 loads on street journeys, you understand, when you possibly can’t discover anyplace to eat.

Dean: You’re getting so hangry…

Megan: Otherwise you’re caught in a gathering that is going via lunch.

Erin: Or that uncomfortable early night time, when it is not dinner time but, but lunch was so very far-off.

Megan: Proper, sure. I had one boyfriend who all the time needed 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 grow to be hangry.

Dean: I’ve completely carried out that. I am guessing that Megan’s gonna have a neater time with “breastaurant” than with “hangry,” proper?

Erin: I’m considering that there is already a technique for making phrases that imply anger linked to one thing. We’ve “desk rage,” and “laptop rage,” and “street rage,” and “aircraft rage.”

Megan: [sounding disappointed] Proper. So it’d be “starvation rage.”

Erin: Yeah.

Megan: [sounding defeated and resigned] Yeah.

Dean: Nicely hear, Megan, thanks very a lot.

Megan: Thanks.

Dean: Okay.

Megan: All proper.

Dean: Be effectively.

Megan: Bye.

Dean Olsher and Erin McKean Share Their Ideas on Hangry in 2024

As I discussed above, I not too long ago caught up with Olsher and McKean by way of e mail to ask them why they had been so positive that “hangry” wouldn’t be the large success it’s grow to be. They had been nice sports activities about it. Learn on for the main points.

Megan: Might you give just a little historical past/background of the “What’s Your Phrase?” phase you hosted on the Subsequent Huge Factor?

Erin: I went again and checked my e mail (I am a digital packrat, I hold every little thing) and it seems like I bought an e mail from Dean Olsher in January of 2002. At that time I might been working for Oxford College Press for a couple of 12 months and a half or so. He needed to do “one thing language associated” for the present, and we had a name and batted round some concepts. The primary phase aired in April of 2002, I believe.

Megan: Once you heard my pitch of “hangry,” what was it that made you suppose it wouldn’t take off? Might you speculate on why you had the unique response you needed to my pitch?

Erin: I believe I’ll must 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 typically 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.

After 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 shocked 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. Sooner or later a man stated: “After I get up within the morning, I’m very indignant, and I hit loads.” The remainder of us within the room exchanged anxious glances till we realized that he was hungry and ate loads.

Megan: What’s it about “hangry” that you simply suppose has caught on?

Erin: On reflection, I believe I underestimated how enjoyable it’s to say. It lends itself to exaggeration…”I am hangggggggry.”

Megan: In response to my analysis the earliest identified use of hangry was in 1910. Why do you suppose the phrase didn’t take off sooner, and even after I pitched it, after which grew to become so ubiquitous?

Erin: It is so exhausting to say—that is completely a phrase that might have been used extra in speech and never made it into print (it is very 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 only 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 consider 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 not less than Sept 2015, in keeping with the Wayback Machine.

Megan: Are there different meals phrases you possibly can do not forget that you referred to as or didn’t name through the years?

Erin: None spring instantly to thoughts…

Dean: Nicely, this might 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 following hangry? I.e. what are some meals phrases which might be effervescent below 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 elements” (from the all the time attention-grabbing “Second Breakfast” e-newsletter). I am additionally seeing quite a lot of references to “meals 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 akin to tteokbokki, elements like gochujang, and practices like mukbang movies.

I am additionally amused by “batchie” or “batch brew”—espresso brewed in massive batches, versus single-serving pour-overs. Every thing outdated is new once more…

Megan: Now for the opposite phrase I pitched: What do you suppose right this moment about “breastaurant?” Why hasn’t it taken off?

Erin: I believe as a result of it largely refers to 1 well-known chain, so…folks simply would use the identify of the chain. 🙂  We do embody 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 believe we will have to attend for the Zeitgeist to come back round once more on that one.

The rest you’d like Critical Eats readers to find out about your work right this moment?

Erin: I by no means actually preferred being the bouncer on the dictionary nightclub…I need to let all of the phrases in to bop! Nowadays I run Wordnik, a nonprofit, on-line English dictionary the place our objective is to incorporate all the phrases of English—together with the 52% of English phrases that are not included in conventional dictionaries. One of many methods folks can help the mission is by adopting their favourite phrases—I checked and “hangry” and “breastaurant” are each accessible. 🙂

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.