Many European languages use the verb “mange”, “manga”, or “mangez” (pronounced manj, manja, and manjay respectively) to mean “eat”. I was wondering if the name for snacks (i.e., “munchies”) might be a slurred pronunciation from these Latin languages. Any factual answers?
Doesn’t seem to have a definite etymology, but your conjecture has been made before:
http://dictionary.reference.com/cite.html?qh=munch&ia=etymon
From the OED:
“Munchie” has both a UK and a US derivation. The UK had a candy bar named “Munchies,” with OED cites from 1917. The US version dates from the 1970s (“1971 Current Slang (Univ. S. Dakota) Winter 8 Munchies, snacks to eat after smoking marijuana”), but it’s unclear whether it is derived from a British stoner or independently.
FWIW, I first came across the term in the context of smoking pot and getting the munchies. This was around 1970.
Not a candy bar as such, but bite-size chocolates with a biscuit and caramel filling. And they still make them, although if this review is to be believed, they’re not as good as they used to be.
I was born in Omaha, NE.
LOL. Case closed…next question?
“Munchies” derives from the French “Man Chaise” (Man Chair). It is so named because as people relax in their favorite La-z-boy recliner and “Couch Out” to TV or a book or music, they often require snacks (which, btw, comes from the German Schnacken)…
Why look for complex answers involving distorted pronunciations of foreign words? Even though we have no definitive answer, Occam’s Razor would say that munchies probably derived from the English word “munch.”
Not Løten, Norway?: Edvard Munch - Wikipedia