Nosh is one of those perfect words from Yiddish that unsurprisingly made its way into the popular English lexicon. Of course, like many Jewish inventions, the world saw it and said yes, we must have it. Sure, it’s a shorter way of saying “snack” but fittingly has an almost musical onomatopoeia-like sound to it. Ironically, on Reddit, someone defined it as a “fancy word for snack.” Aside for that definition sounding quite the opposite of correct, it also misses the mark in connotation.
The way it’s used often as in “to grab a nosh” conveys to me a friendly meetup, like “doing lunch,” but in a much more informal and close way. You “grab a nosh” with someone you talk to either regularly or haven’t talked to in a while, but can easily jump back into conversation with like no time has passed at all between you.
Nosh as the noun also feels like it’s the comfort food you go to when coping with something tough that’s happened. Leave it to the Jews to create the perfect word for snacking while trying to get over something hard. All this writing about food though is making me hungry. Anyone up for a nosh?