When feeling hungry makes you angry, you’re hangry

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We say we are hungry when feeling the need for food, and angry when feeling annoyance, hostility, or anger. These two adjectives are combined together in hangry, a term used to describe someone who is angry because they are hungry.

This process is called blending, as it blends parts of two words together to create a new one. Many words formed in this way are informal, like frenemy (a blend of friend and enemy) or mansplain (a blend of man and explain). Some, like brunch (a combination of breakfast and lunch) and Spanglish (a mixture of Spanish and English), have long ago made their way into common usage.


The English language is always making up new words like this: webinar (a seminar conducted on the Web), emoticon (an icon representing an emotion), and jeggings (leggings that look like jeans) are all examples of more recently created blends. And so is, of course, Brexit.


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