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Hangry Meaning and Origin

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Colleen from Fairbanks, Alaska, is pondering the word hangry, a portmanteau of hungry and angry, and applied to someone who’s irritable as the result of hunger. Although hangry has been around sincet at least the 1950s, it enjoyed a boost in popularity in the 1990s. In 2018, the Oxford English Dictionary added an entry for this useful adjective. This is part of a complete episode.

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  • I remember coming up with the word “hangry” when I was working nightshift in a factory in ’92. Of course we didn’t have the internet at that time so I didn’t know if it had been used previously but I hadn’t heard or seen it before. It was funny to me when I heard it nearly 20 years later. Too bad I didn’t trademark it back then.

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