In some unspecified time in the future throughout the spring of 2003—sooner than Fb, Instagram, TikTok, and the iPhone, and throughout the an identical time that the first podcasts obtained right here to be—I was listening to one amongst my favorite radio reveals, The Subsequent Large Issue, which aired on WNYC and was syndicated by Public Radio Worldwide from 2000 to 2005. After they purchased to a piece often called “What’s Your Phrase?” throughout which listeners pitched phrases they thought should be throughout the dictionary to the current’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 often called in with two food-related phrases that I believed would guarantee hits: “breastaurant” and “hangry.”
Historic previous would present me correct about one in every of many phrases, nevertheless on the time, Olsher and McKean weren’t purchased. I caught up with the two of them in May of 2024—21 years after the part first aired on May 9, 2003—to get their reflections on my phrases. We talked about the very gradual after which very quick rise of “hangry,” which has been spherical since a minimum of the 1910s, nevertheless didn’t attain cultural saturation until spherical 2015 and solely made it into the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018, nevertheless can now be found printed on socks, T-shirts, tote baggage, and (in reality) in magazines, newspapers, and websites, with no rationalization wished. Our dialogue of the two phrases moreover provides a fascinating (to this specific phrase geek, anyway) look backstage on the sometimes unpredictable means some phrases climb into widespread, dictionary-approved utilization and some don’t.
McKean moreover makes the very good stage that print dictionaries have a motive to limit their lexicon a minimum of partly as a result of bodily nature of the product—throughout the digital age, there is no such thing as a need for such limits, and language can evolve slightly extra shortly. Philosophy of language aside, poring by means of the archives of The Subsequent Large Issue to look once more at earlier predictions with the benefit of hindsight was a satisfying practice, which I extraordinarily advocate while you’ve gotten some time to spare.
Skip to minute 37:55 throughout the episode “It’s Not Over” on the WNYC website to take heed to the whole May 9, 2003 “What’s Your Phrase?” part or to 43:25 for merely my bit, or study on for the transcript of my title, then proceed beneath for my present Q&A with McKean and Olsher.
Pitching Hangry: Full 2003 Transcript
Dean: Hi there, who’s this?
Megan: That’s Megan Steintrager.
Dean: Megan, the place are you calling from?
Megan: I am really calling from Yonkers, the place I work, and I keep in New York Metropolis.
Dean: And you have 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 purchased it immediately. And my mother really obtained right here up with this phrase, which I consider is pretty humorous. She was merely driving by and she or he talked about, “Have you ever ever children ever been to that breastaurant?” Now we have 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 different phrase if I can pitch that too.
Erin: What’s the other one?
Dean: Go for it!
Megan: It sort of ties into breastaurant.
Erin: Please don’t inform me it’s identical to the male chain…
Megan: [Interrupts Erin] No, no, no, no. It’s, uh, “hangry.”
Erin: Hangry?
Megan: Hangry.
Erin: When you’re so hungry, you’re merely ready to tear someone’s head off?
Megan: Exactly! It comes up slightly loads on freeway journeys, you perceive, when chances are you’ll’t uncover wherever to eat.
Dean: You’re getting so hangry…
Megan: In any other case you are caught in a gathering that’s going by means of lunch.
Erin: Or that uncomfortable early evening time, when it’s not time for supper however, however lunch was so very distant.
Megan: Correct, positive. I had one boyfriend who always wished to exit for a drink sooner than dinner and so I could be, like, secretly having a meal sooner than we went out so that I didn’t grow to be hangry.
Dean: I’ve utterly carried out that. I’m guessing that Megan’s gonna have a neater time with “breastaurant” than with “hangry,” correct?
Erin: I’m contemplating that there’s already a way for making phrases that indicate anger associated to 1 factor. Now we’ve got “desk rage,” and “laptop rage,” and “freeway rage,” and “plane rage.”
Megan: [sounding disappointed] Correct. So it’d be “hunger rage.”
Erin: Yeah.
Megan: [sounding defeated and resigned] Yeah.
Dean: Correctly concentrate, Megan, thanks very loads.
Megan: Thanks.
Dean: Okay.
Megan: All correct.
Dean: Be correctly.
Megan: Bye.
Dean Olsher and Erin McKean Share Their Concepts on Hangry in 2024
As I mentioned above, I latterly caught up with Olsher and McKean by means of e-mail to ask them why they’ve been so constructive that “hangry” wouldn’t be the large success it’s grow to be. They’ve been good sports activities actions about it. Study on for the small print.
Megan: Might you give considerably historic previous/background of the “What’s Your Phrase?” part you hosted on the Subsequent Large Issue?
Erin: I went once more and checked my e-mail (I’m a digital packrat, I maintain each half) and it appears to be like I purchased an e-mail from Dean Olsher in January of 2002. At the moment I might been working for Oxford School Press for a few 12 months and a half or so. He wished to do “one factor language related” for the current, and we had a reputation and batted spherical some ideas. The first part aired in April of 2002, I consider.
Megan: When you heard my pitch of “hangry,” what was it that made you assume it wouldn’t take off? Might you speculate on why you had the distinctive response you wanted to my pitch?
Erin: I consider I am going to should borrow a widely known reply of Samuel Johnson’s proper right here and say, “Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance.” One in every of many points I like about working with phrases is that typically we merely have no idea why one phrase succeeds and one different fails, or why a phrase has a second of recognition after which falls from favor.
As soon as I used to be engaged on typical dictionaries, our big constraint was the size of the printed e-book—so we’ve got been additional in a mode of looking for causes NOT to include a phrase.
Dean: Wow, we really blew it on this one, didn’t we? I’m shocked that I didn’t embrace the phrase wholeheartedly, on account of it makes me take into account a humorous memory from college. All through my junior 12 months in France, I led an English dialog group on the American Library in town. In some unspecified time in the future a person talked about: “As soon as I stand up throughout the morning, I am very offended, and I hit slightly loads.” The rest of us throughout the room exchanged nervous glances until we realized that he was hungry and ate slightly loads.
Megan: What’s it about “hangry” that you just simply assume has caught on?
Erin: Wanting again, I consider I underestimated how satisfying it is to say. It lends itself to exaggeration…”I’m hangggggggry.”
Megan: In accordance with my evaluation the earliest recognized use of hangry was in 1910. Why do you assume the phrase didn’t take off sooner, and even as soon as I pitched it, after which grew to develop into so ubiquitous?
Erin: It’s so onerous to say—that’s utterly a phrase which may have been used additional in speech and by no means made it into print (it is extraordinarily informal). And the kinds of folks that purchased their writing printed have been for a really very long time the kind of folks that just about always had enough to eat, or who weren’t anticipated to be on diets. So perhaps they merely didn’t ever get hangry. The citations throughout the OED are attention-grabbing in that of the 5 citations; two are about animals, and one is using the phrase as an example of contraction; solely two are about of us, and every of those are after 2000.
Megan: What do you take into account hangry being added to the OED in 2018?
Erin: I’m all for it! I think about every phrase deserves a spot throughout the dictionary—the dictionary I work on now, Wordnik, has included ‘hangry’ since a minimum of Sept 2015, primarily based on the Wayback Machine.
Megan: Are there totally different meals phrases chances are you’ll don’t forget that you just often called or didn’t title by means of the years?
Erin: None spring immediately to ideas…
Dean: Correctly, this would possibly solely be a meals phrase for zombies, nevertheless Erin as quickly as assigned some arcane phrases to John Linnell to work proper right into a They Might Be Giants tune. That’s how he ended up writing “Contrecoup,” which describes a form of thoughts hurt.
Megan: Any concepts on the next hangry? I.e. what are some meals phrases that are effervescent beneath the ground now and will take off in 10 or 20 years?
Erin: I saved a citation for “nutritionism” the other day, meaning “the low cost of meals to its macro- and micro-nutritional parts” (from the always attention-grabbing “Second Breakfast” e-newsletter). I’m moreover seeing quite a few references to “meals noise” (mounted intrusive concepts about meals), notably since semaglutide remedy seem to indicate them off.
Korean meals phrases look like getting additional well-liked, from dishes similar to tteokbokki, parts like gochujang, and practices like mukbang motion pictures.
I’m moreover amused by “batchie” or “batch brew”—espresso brewed in huge batches, versus single-serving pour-overs. All of the issues outdated is new as soon as extra…
Megan: Now for the other phrase I pitched: What do you assume within the current day about “breastaurant?” Why hasn’t it taken off?
Erin: I consider on account of it largely refers to not less than one well-known chain, so…of us merely would use the title of the chain. 
We do embody it in Wordnik, though, and have since 2015, with loads of citations. So I might not title it a failure, it’s merely not a high-frequency phrase.
Dean: To be reliable, whereas breastaurant did actually really feel like a contender 20+ years up to now, I consider we must attend for the Zeitgeist to return spherical as soon as extra on that one.
The remaining you’d like Extreme Eats readers to search out out about your work within the current day?
Erin: I under no circumstances really favored being the bouncer on the dictionary nightclub…I want to let the entire phrases in to bop! As of late I run Wordnik, a nonprofit, on-line English dictionary the place our objective is to include all the phrases of English—along with the 52% of English phrases that aren’t included in typical dictionaries. One in every of many strategies of us may also help the enterprise is by adopting their favorite phrases—I checked and “hangry” and “breastaurant” are every accessible.
Dean: Today I’m a music therapist. And I latterly launched my debut album! Letters of Transit is at deanolsher.bandcamp.com.