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snack

UK/snæk/US/snæk/
nounA2Common in everyday speech and writing · #2,614 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: snacks

A snack is a small quick bite between real meals. Have a snack, snack food, a healthy snack.

It is defined by being between meals rather than by size, which is why a large snack is a joke and not a contradiction. Snacking has grown enormously as a share of what people eat, and food designed for it is engineered to be hard to stop eating. Note that the word came from Dutch and once meant a bite or snap.

ImGz · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of snack

  1. 1nounsnackA small quick bite between meals.A2

    “The kids had a quick snack of apples and cheese after school.”

    • Said"I'll have a snack now and eat properly when you get home."
    • WrittenThe snacks at the meeting were the only reason anyone stayed past four.
    • UsedPack a snack for the train; the buffet car is rarely open.
    • ContrastA snack, not a meal. A meal is sat down to; a snack is eaten standing at the counter. meal →
    • Not thisThree courses at midnight is a very late dinner, not a snack. A snack fits in one hand.
    • Exchange"Hungry?""A bit. Is there a snack somewhere, or just fruit?"

    Patternhave / grab a snack · a quick / healthy / late-night snack · snack on + noun · snack bar

snack is a small meal.

Remember it

snACK → a quick attACK on the fridge

Four o'clock, a quick attack on the fridge: an apple, a glass of milk, and back to work.

hooks ontoattack

Where it comes from

Middle Dutch snacken means to snap or bite. The sense of a small meal came later in English.

  1. Middle Dutch

    snacken — to snack

  2. English, today

    snack

From Middle Dutch snacken (“to snack”). Cognate with German schnäken (“to snack”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen

Practise this word

snack in the wild

  • Potato chips form a large part of the snack food and convenience food market in Western countries.

    Potato chips

  • Bamba is one of the leading snack foods produced and sold in Israel.

    Bamba (snack)

  • Bamba makes up 25% of the Israeli snack market.

    Bamba (snack)

  • The product is marketed as a "baked snack cracker" on the label with various flavors and varieties.

    Goldfish (cracker)

  • Cheese puffs, cheese curls, cheese balls, cheese ball puffs, cheesy puffs, or corn curls are a puffed corn snack, coated with a mixture of cheese or cheese-flavored powders.

    Cheese puffs

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.