Unnumbered source etymology · variant 1/2
Original entry ↗A light meal usually eaten around midday, notably when not as main meal of the day. · A break in play between the first and second sessions. · Any small meal, especially one eaten at a social gathering. · A thin piece or hunk (of bread, meat, etc.)
Recorded since 1580 in the sense “piece, hunk”. The word luncheon with the same meaning is presumably an extension on the pattern of puncheon (“cask”) and truncheon (“cudgel”). But earliest found forms of luncheon include lunshin and lunching, which are equivalent to lunch + -ing, with the suffix -ing possibly later modified to imitate a French origin. In contrast, the more common sense “light meal” is first attested for luncheon in 1652 and for lunch in 1829, so in this sense the latter is probably a shortening of the former. Lunch is possibly a derivative of lump (as hunch is from hump. See hunch for more), or represents an alteration of nuncheon, from Middle English nonechenche (“light midday meal”) (see nuncheon) and altered by northern English dialect lunch (“hunk of bread or cheese”) (1590), which perhaps is from lump or from Spanish lonja (“a slice”, literally “loin”).
Relationships mentioned by the source
These are extracted mentions, not a timeline or a verified sequence of immediate parents.
- Word-formation component-ingen
- Derivation mentionnonechencheenm · light midday meal
- Cognate mentionlonjaes · a slice
Inspect preserved source fields
Raw extraction fields are retained for auditing. Their order does not establish ancestry.
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"templates": [
{
"name": "af",
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "",
"3": "-ing",
"alt1": "lunch"
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},
{
"name": "der",
"args": {
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"3": "nonechenche",
"t": "light midday meal"
},
"expansion": "Middle English nonechenche (“light midday meal”)"
},
{
"name": "cog",
"args": {
"1": "es",
"2": "lonja",
"t": "a slice",
"lit": "loin"
},
"expansion": "Spanish lonja (“a slice”, literally “loin”)"
}
],
"links": [
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[
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"references": [],
"descendants": [
{
"lang": "Bengali",
"lang_code": "bn",
"word": "লাঞ্চ",
"raw_tags": [
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],
"roman": "lanco"
},
{
"lang": "Cantonese",
"lang_code": "yue",
"word": "lunch",
"raw_tags": [
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]
},
{
"lang": "Dutch",
"lang_code": "nl",
"word": "lunch",
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{
"lang": "French",
"lang_code": "fr",
"word": "lunch",
"raw_tags": [
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},
{
"lang": "German",
"lang_code": "de",
"word": "Lunch",
"raw_tags": [
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{
"lang": "Japanese",
"lang_code": "ja",
"word": "ランチ",
"raw_tags": [
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"roman": "ranchi"
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{
"lang": "Korean",
"lang_code": "ko",
"word": "런치",
"raw_tags": [
"borrowed"
],
"roman": "reonchi"
},
{
"lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
"lang_code": "nb",
"word": "lunsj",
"raw_tags": [
"borrowed"
]
},
{
"lang": "Norwegian Nynorsk",
"lang_code": "nn",
"word": "lunsj",
"raw_tags": [
"borrowed"
]
},
{
"lang": "Polish",
"lang_code": "pl",
"word": "lunch",
"raw_tags": [
"borrowed"
]
},
{
"lang": "Portuguese",
"lang_code": "pt",
"word": "lanche",
"raw_tags": [
"borrowed"
]
},
{
"lang": "Russian",
"lang_code": "ru",
"word": "ланч",
"raw_tags": [
"borrowed"
],
"roman": "lanč"
},
{
"lang": "Russian",
"lang_code": "ru",
"word": "ленч",
"raw_tags": [
"borrowed"
],
"roman": "lenč"
},
{
"lang": "Spanish",
"lang_code": "es",
"word": "lonche",
"raw_tags": [
"borrowed"
]
},
{
"lang": "Swedish",
"lang_code": "sv",
"word": "lunch",
"raw_tags": [
"borrowed"
]
},
{
"lang": "Ukrainian",
"lang_code": "uk",
"word": "ланч",
"raw_tags": [
"borrowed"
],
"roman": "lanč"
},
{
"lang": "Yiddish",
"lang_code": "yi",
"word": "לאָנטש",
"raw_tags": [
"borrowed"
],
"roman": "lontsh"
}
],
"lexical": [
{
"pos": "noun",
"glosses": [
"A light meal usually eaten around midday, notably when not as main meal of the day.",
"A break in play between the first and second sessions.",
"Any small meal, especially one eaten at a social gathering.",
"A thin piece or hunk (of bread, meat, etc.)"
],
"tags": [
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"US",
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