For all the years of our friendship, my late pal Jessica and I always had an easy compatibility and a conflict-free rapport — except for one key sticking point that threatened the very fabric of our relationship whenever we spent any length of time together. Jessica was an "I forgot to eat" person. I, in stark contrast, am a "carries granola bars in her purse to avoid making a scene" one. You know, a hangry one. What made us so different? Was it our metabolisms, our mental health, our circadian clocks? Or is it that I'm just a monster?
Humans have been getting irritable when they haven't eaten since the first biped yelled at the second biped for not stopping to forage for berries back there at the edge of the forest when they had the chance. Yet the portmanteau for that volatile feeling — hangry — only dates back to mid-20th century America, with a casual reference in a psychoanalytic journal. It took another six decades for "hangry" to finally enter the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018.
