HANGRY or HUNGRY?
In summer 2021, all I wanted after a long meeting session that lasted like forever was a hot cup of black coffee in a quiet corner of the hotel’s lobby. I scuttled off to the hotel’s coffee shop, grabbed my black coffee and before my first sip, three people who also attended the meeting joined me.
That day, I hadn’t had breakfast, so I was awfully hungry and at the same time tremendously angry because the one-hour meeting took much more time to end, it literally ate the whole day. I couldn’t refrain myself from saying it out loud. “I’m so hangry”, I said. It sounded like I was saying “angry with an h” – [h-angry]. I intended to. To make my day more irritable, one of the attendants, at my table, cut me off to correct my pronunciation. “Hungry not h-angry”, he sarcastically said to me with a wide mindless smile drawn on his face. “What you heard is exactly what I meant, I am h-angry”, I calmly replied stressing on the “angry” sound. He gave me that face of “whatever”.
The reality is that I wasn’t annoyed by him correcting my pronunciation but the face he gave me after. Though I was prone to snap at him, I kept my calmness. The truth is I dislike people like him, the kind of people who think they know everything when in reality they don’t.
What’s the difference of being “hangry” and being “hungry”?
The first known use of the word hangry dated to 1918 as per Merriam-Webster. It is composed of two words “hungry and angry” and by blending the two sounds we get hangry [h-angry] and means “irritable or angry because hunger”. Portmanteau is the term used to describe this type of composed word.
It’s a clever combo of “hungry” and “angry”. It defines the state of someone being so famished to a point that he becomes so irritable and overreact to minor annoyances.
Some people get grumpy when they’re hungry.
In contrast, “hungry” is having an uncomfortable feeling in your stomach because you need food ~ Merriam-Webster
Some examples of “hangry” in a sentence:
- He was so hangry that he snapped at the waiter because his order took much longer than the usual.
- He had missed the welcome drink, so he got a bit hangry by the time they rolled the dinner.
- Some people are unaware hangry is being angry due to hunger.
- He gets easily annoyed when he’s hangry.
- They say I get so cranky before a late lunch especially when I’m quite hangry.
Cheers!
For more stories follow me on Telegram
