On an episode of Uncle Mort’s North Country, a comedy drama on Radio 4 Extra that I listened to today, I heard the word snap used for a packed lunch. I’e heard it before, but wasn’t sure where it came from. The drama features two characters from Yorkshire: Uncle Mort and his nephew, Carter Brandon, who both speak with strong Yorkshire accents, so I thought snap might be a Yorkshire word.
I found it in a Yorkshire Dialect Dictionary defined as ‘a light meal’, and Wiktionary defines it as ‘a small meal, a snack; lunch’.
According to the The Oxford Guide to Etymology, lunch boxes were once called snap-tins in parts of the UK, and the word snap came to mean a a light meal or quick bite by metaphorical extension.
In A History of the Word on the BBC website it says that miners used snap tins to carry their lunch down the pits – the photo is an example of a miner’s snap tin.
The word snap comes from the Dutch / Low German snappen (to bite; seize), from the Proto-Germanic *snappōną (to snap; snatch; chatter), from the Proto-Indo-European *ksnew- (to scrape; scratch; grate; rub) [source].
What do you call a container you put your lunch in?
As a child in north east England I used to hear the word “bait” for a packed lunch. Where I live now in Lincolnshire “pack-up” seems to be most common.
In south Wales “snap” was also commonly used (among the miners). In the far south west of England “crib” was used. There’s a cake/breadshop in Liskeard (Cornwall) that’s called the Crib Shop (or something similar).
In Potteries (N. Staffordshire) dialect, snappin(g)s used to be used.
Going off at a slight tangent, in England (and elsewhere?), a tuck shop is a small shop run by pupils within a school, selling food to other pupils – although usually only chocolate, crisps and the like rather than ‘proper’ food. I have never heard the word tuck used on its own in this sense – perhaps it was once – but I imagine it is related to the Australian slang word tucker meaning ‘food’. There is also the expression “Tuck in!”, an instruction to start eating.
“Lunch box” in USA (even if it is a bag) or “brown bag” (bags made of brown paper).
My grandad was born and raised in Coventry, and he used to say snap
When I left home for university my grandad from Mansfield in Nottinghamshire said “Mek sure ya get enough snap”. The snap tin was carried in a snap bag – I had one when I did a holiday job on a building site..