Lauren Collins is a good writer (which is why the New Yorker pays her), but also a supremely irritating one: her articles are frequently random riffs on some subject she feels like writing about, mingling personal experiences with what appear to be the results of a cursory Google search and with little concern for accuracy — they would never have gotten past the transom in the old New Yorker, with its famously picky editors and fact-checkers. I see from a site search that I was complaining about her as far back as 2008 (when she became a staff writer): “But some things are too much to be borne.”
In “The Case for Lunch” (archived), she opens with a section about the remarkable Roxane Debuisson, who would have been worth an article on her own (but apparently is not worth a Wikipedia page); she had “an exceptional collection of Paris ephemera”:
“The collection began out of my love for Paris and my love of the street,” Debuisson later said. For decades, she conducted a one-woman salvage operation, scooping up rating plates, bench marks, pieces of bridges, tree corsets, street signs, fountains, gallows, Métro seats, mailboxes, and some seventy thousand commercial invoices. A 1970 photograph by her friend Robert Doisneau shows her in a coat and kerchief, crouching on the pavement to examine a dilapidated bust of Molière, rescued from a bakery near the Pont Neuf.
(I don’t know what a “tree corset” is — Google gives me only actual corsets made of bark.) But she was also a devout restaurant-goer:
The sale of her husband’s I.T. company to I.B.M., in the nineties, permitted Debuisson to do as she pleased in meals as in memorabilia. At each fine-dining establishment, she had a favorite dish: chausson aux truffes (L’Ambroisie), bugnes (the Ritz), clafoutis et la caroline au café (the Plaza Athénée), pommes soufflées (Le Meurice), mille-feuille (Le Grand Véfour), honey ice cream and frangipane tart (Drouant). Everywhere, wines by the magnum. If Ruinart Blanc de Blancs, her preferred champagne, wasn’t available, she sent out for it, once dispatching her driver all the way to Reims. She could be demanding, but she tipped big.
The hook that leads into the rest of the article is “She never ate dinner, considering lunch superior.” The rest of the article consists of miscellaneous thoughts about lunch, and here’s the sentence that enraged me enough to post:
Per Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, the word “lunch” likely derives from “clunch” or “clutch,” meaning “as much food as one’s hand can hold.”
It just makes me feel that nobody outside of linguistics departments (and, of course, the distinguished readership of this blog) knows or cares anything about language. What would happen if, in the course of an article about forest management and fire control, an author wrote “Per Joseph Priestley’s works on air, fire is caused by the release of phlogiston”? Surely even in these loosey-goosey times some editor would have said “We don’t believe that any more, do we?” Samuel Johnson’s dictionary is from the same era as Priestley and is just as valid a source of knowledge; did it not occur to anyone to look at a more modern reference? The OED’s entry (“Perhaps evolved < lump n.¹, on the analogy of the apparent relation between hump and hunch, bump and bunch“) is from 1903, so it’s pretty mossy itself, but at least it’s by actual etymologists, and not much seems to have been learned since then (Wiktionary basically reproduces the OED story). In any case, the point is that if you want to throw in an etymology as yet another random fact for your article, get a real one, don’t just dip into an eighteenth-century book and say “Ooh, that sounds cool, I’ll use it!”
This page doesn’t actually show any pictures of them, but suggests they might be more usually known in English as tree guards https://cyria.net/en/furniture-urban-design/fleurissement-et-protection-d-arbre/corset-d-arbre/
(Which is the thing I *thought* they meant, but I had no idea what its name was!)
Thanks, that must be right — kudos for coming up with it!
Etymology of lunch previously here and here.
The criticism would be more well-founded if there were a real standard and evidence-based etymology, but I think you’re telling us that there isn’t. Why should a fact-checker of 2025 prefer the speculation of 1903 to the speculation of 1753 (or whatever), esp. when the latter is a better story?
JWB: I imagine the difference is that the speculation of 1755 is certainly wrong, that of 1903 possibly wrong.
Exactly. Plus, the speculation of 1753 is by an amateur!
Etymology of lunch previously here and here.
Thanks, I’d forgotten that. But I didn’t believe then and don’t believe now that lunch is from Irish lóinte.
Jan Freeman had a column on the history of “lunch” and “luncheon”, inspired by an exhibit at the New York Public Library that actually displayed Johnson’s and Webster’s dictionaries open to their definitions for lunch!
Ha, that’s great!
That NYPL exhibit (Freeman’s link rotted; archived, current link) gives some context that may shed light on why the early history of the word “lunch” is so obscure (although maybe they’re overselling it with “lunch … acquired its modern identity here on the streets of New York”):
That leaves the apparently standard “etymology” as sound-symbolic for a little chunk of food, found in the OED according to the 2nd comment I linked to.
The current OED doesn’t mention sound symbolism. For “lunch” it says”
For “lump” it has
Sorry, not putting in the italics.
Jerry, that OED entry isn’t “current”, it’s unchanged from 1903. (You need to know that if you’re commenting at Language Hat!) Sound symbolism is Y’s explanation, not what the OED said — David may have misinterpreted Y’s comment, which quoted the OED’s citations, not its etymology.
The etymology I’d currently trust the most is AHD’s, which has lunch (as a meal, attested only since the early 1800s) < shortening of luncheon (as a meal or snack, since the 1600s) < “probably” influence of older lunch ‘thick slice, hunk (of food)’ (late 1500s, origin murky) on nuncheon. Sound symbolism may have something to do with that older lunch.
Maybe related, via google books:
1830, Frasier’s Magazine
I’ve still got a hunch,
To serve me for lunch,
1837, New Monthly Magazine and Humorist
I ‘ve got to lunch with my lawyer, and he ‘ll expect me to eat something;
and in fact I ‘m so anxious, and feel so hurried, that I have eaten
a good piece of my hunk,
Thanks, ktschwarz. Kindly delete “current” from what I wrote.
Stephen Goranson, those quotations add nothing to what was already in the old OED, which has lunch, n. in the ‘meal’ sense from 1829. And, credit where it’s due, Etymonline has an example from 1786 in a comic play. This isn’t surprising, since luncheon had already had that sense since the mid-1600s, so it could have been shortened at any time, even if only colloquially. The hard questions are where luncheon and lunch, both originally meaning ‘thick slice’ in the 1500s, came from in the first place — and we don’t really even know which came first, since the earliest citations aren’t very far apart. I don’t see any use in further theorizing without data, and data from the 1500s is going to be hard to come by.
Incidentally, the verb lunch is recorded even earlier: Dave Wilton has a recently updated Big List entry at Wordorigins, featuring “If I could tell where to lunch” in a play from 1627. Still, the old OED’s first citation for the verb is an interesting observation on language change:
Sure enough, the line in the 1627 play is from a servant! (Dave seems to have deleted his previous discussion of the possible involvement of nuncheon, I don’t know why.)
I didn’t know nuncheon; ktschwarz mentioned it, and that comment is still there.
What is the same pseudo-suffix doing in truncheon?
Not to mention the barrel/cask sense, etym and suffixing even more dub.
ktschwartz, I was not antedating, but showing association of lunch with hunch and hunk.
I wonder what sense of “gallows” Debuisson was collecting.
New Yorker: I am very much in the target demographic to subscribe. I have had over the years many friends to read it religiously, as evidence by the stacks of back issues in their bathrooms. But I have never pulled the trigger. This kind of stuff is part of why I have not. It gives me the feeling of “Very good on subjects I don’t know much about, but weak on subjects I do.” This is a dangerous sort of wrongness, as it can mislead otherwise sensible and cautious readers.
Alfred Ayres: I recently was delighted to find his etiquette guide from 1884 in a bookcase in my church. It has a library stamp for the church’s Sunday School, which back in the day was a very big deal. I doubt that etiquette was part of the curriculum. My guess is the book was placed in the library as a forlorn hope of civilizing the little monsters. When I showed the book around, my coreligionists were impressed by its antiquity, but it was its authorship that impressed me. I am using it as light reading in odd moments.
This kind of stuff is part of why I have not. It gives me the feeling of “Very good on subjects I don’t know much about, but weak on subjects I do.” This is a dangerous sort of wrongness, as it can mislead otherwise sensible and cautious readers.
But it’s not a scholarly journal, it’s a general magazine. The level of writing is uniformly high, and it’s one of the few venues for curated guides to culture (books, movies, etc.). You’re the only judge of what you want from a magazine, but for all my occasional irritation with things like this, I wouldn’t dream of letting my subscription lapse.
And perhaps it’s worth saying that I wouldn’t have objected had she written:
That would have been an amusing sidelight. What bothered me was her presenting it as actual information.
Note the OED entry is not “unchanged since 1903.” It just hasn’t had a complete and thorough revision yet. The OED Online says the entry was last changed in March 2025, but what was changed isn’t clear. Citations have been added since 1903, and the etymology is identical to that in the 1989 second edition (whether that is changed from 1903, I do not know; one would need a print copy of the first edition to compare).
I did a longer treatment of the etymology in January, but at its core it doesn’t differ from the conclusions of the OED, just more detail. https://www.wordorigins.org/big-list-entries/lunch-luncheon
I was initially skeptical of hump/hunch and bump/bunch (partly because I thought of hunch – “tentative idea” rather than “holding the body in a curled up stance”.
It’s interesting to consider some other such pairs, from Wiktionary:
Pump/punch – pump has no secure etymology.
Crump(et)/crunch – crunch is said to be of imitative origin
Dump/dunk – a slightly different pairing; here dunk is somewhat uncertain “probably from Old Norse dumpa “to thump” with a semantic shift that’s plausible, but strained and unexplained or traced.
I’m not really saying that these were productive endings in English at any time, but I wonder whether there are mutual patterns of descent.
As a verb, dunk is much more widespread; German (ein)tunken “briefly, but not terribly quickly, dip into anything more or less liquid”. There are even places where instead of Sauce/Soße they say Tunke, or so I read.
Dave: I meant the OED’s *etymology* was unchanged from 1903, not the entry (typo, I guess), and yes, of course I checked, and linked to the page on Hathitrust — did you miss that?
I don’t understand why you deleted any mention of nuncheon in your 2025 revision. It was discussed in your old (2013) version, and I would’ve thought you’d look for scholarship more recent than 1903; AHD’s etymology using nuncheon dates from their 1992 edition.
Eh, i let my subscription lapse and havent spent much time scond-guessing myself thereover.
ktschwarz, your sometimes excellent contributions might have more influence with less officiousness.
When learning Brazilian Portuguese I had wondered whether “lanche”, a snack, was connected to “lunch.” Now I learn the original meaning of “lunch” here that seems more likely.
When learning Brazilian Portuguese I had wondered whether “lanche”, a snack, was connected to “lunch.” Now I learn the original meaning of “lunch” here that seems more likely.
I Googled the etymology of the Pt Br lanche and found this:
‘lanche: aportuguesamento do inglês lunch, redução de luncheon «refeição do meio-dia», que tem origem desconhecida (cf. Online Etymology Dicitionary)’
Portuguese rendering of the English ‘Lunch’, a reduction of luncheon, midday meal, of unknown origin, (cf, Online Etymology Dictionary)
in Ciberdúvidas da Língua Portuguesa, https://ciberduvidas.iscte-iul.pt/consultorio/perguntas/a-etimologia-dos-nomes-das-refeicoes-usados-em-portugal/36072 [consultado em 27-07-2025]
And the world goes round and round. Puxa vida!
There are even places where instead of Sauce/Soße they say Tunke, or so I read
My maternal grandfather (born and raised in Elbing / West Prussia) used that word.
“Very good on subjects I don’t know much about, but weak on subjects I do.”
That’s how I have always described The Economist.
Lunch is a common word of obscure origin, has Anatoly Liberman blogged on it? Yes he has, just last year (following blogs on the equally murky lump and hunk). The relation to nuncheon was suggested already in the mid-1800s. There was a back-and-forth over the proposed origin from Spanish lonja ‘slice’, which was first floated in the 1600s, rejected by Skeat, mentioned only as a “curious” aside by the OED (as quoted above), but defended by a review in the Athenaeum. Skeat has a convincing sociolinguistic argument: “it is far more likely that luncheon was an extension of the provincial-English lunch, meaning ‘a lump,’ than that our labourers took to talking Spanish.” But the Athenaeum counters with text evidence: all the OED’s citations before 1650 are “a Spanish-English and a French-English dictionary, two translations, and a passage relating to the Netherlands” (in a travel book). To these they add Cotgrave’s French-English dictionary (1611*), and might also have added Florio’s Italian-English A Worlde of Wordes (1598): “Brano, a piece, a scrap, a mammock, a cob, a luncheon, a lump.” That is, I think they’re saying, do we actually know that provincial English had the word first? If it was first recorded only by educated bilinguals, does that mean they had it first, or was it just the accidents of who gets published and what gets preserved?
The English Dialect Dictionary recorded quite a few words in the 1800s also meaning ‘thick slice or lump of food, usually bread or cheese’ in one region or another (sometimes among other meanings, and sometimes marked obsolete): canch/kench, clunch, cluncheon, gunch, hunch, huncheon, scuncheon, stunch. DSL also has some of these, as well as dunchie. Yet rhyme is not destiny: there’s also e.g. glunch ‘pout, sullen look’, runch ‘wild mustard’, and many more with unrelated meanings. I don’t know what this says about the ultimate origin, other than that people like words with -unch-.
* Liberman put 1673, but the quote is already in the earliest edition in 1611, which is significant when looking for early sources.
Let’s discuss this over mammock.
quite a few words in the 1800s also meaning ‘thick slice or lump of food, usually bread or cheese’
“Ploughman’s lunch” (bread, cheese, and pickled onion) was coined in the 1950s by the UK cheese marketing board.
What did ploughpeople eat for lunch before the 1950’s?
Yes, I can personally attest to this. OTOH, the vinegar in the onion should be kept far away from the beer [**].
I’m not sure ploughing after beer is wise — mars the straightness of your furrows.
[**] In CAMRA pubs (if there are any left in Blighty) it was frowned-upon to keep the traditional jar of pickled eggs on the bar.
Zythophile (2007) defends the bread-cheese-beer combination against the charge of inauthenticity — it’s only the name “ploughman’s lunch” that was coined in the 1950s (as well as, I infer, the idea that it had anything to do with ploughmen specifically — in any case I expect it wasn’t *that* much beer that you couldn’t go back to work).
And sadly, on checking that blog, I saw an announcement that Zythophile died on June 1, 2025. He’ll be missed.
Oh, hell. I’m very sorry to hear that.
Vechnaya pamyat. i think i have some Theakston’s Old Peculier in the fridge with which to drink a valediction.