nuncheon

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Luncheon is "nuncheon."

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Definitions (1)

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  1. A light meal taken in the middle of the day; a luncheon. A repast between dinner and supper, a nunchin, a beuer and andersmeate. Florio. Breakfast, dinner, nunchions, supper, and bever. Middleton, Inner-Temple Masque. Harvest folkes … On sheafes of corne were at their noonshun's close, Whilst by them merrily the bag-pipe goes. W. Browne, Britannia's Pastorals, ii. 1. I left London this morning at eight o'clock, and the only ten minutes I have spent out of my chaise since that time procured me a nunchion at Marlborough. Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, xliv. (Davies.) Oh rats, rejoice! The world is grown to one vast drysaltery! So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon, Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon! Browning, Pied Piper of Hamelin.

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Examples (19)

  • Then there is the nuncheon, at noon or after as duties allow; and men gather for the daymeal, and such mirth as there still may be, about the hour of sunset. —  The Lord of the Rings
  • [186] She probably wrote n oonshine, a somewhat incorrect way of spelling nuncheon (luncheon). —  The Project Gutenberg eBook of Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters, by William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
  • "I feel like I'm on the set of 'Gigi,'" my friend burbled, as we decided to pull out all the stops and order the five-course Lady Tiffany Tea ($29.95) - more like what a woman of the 1800s would call a "nuncheon."
  • Besides the sack of nets, the bag of ferrets, and a small bundle in a knotted handkerchief--his 'nuncheon'--which in themselves make a tolerable load, he has brought a billhook, and a 'navigator,' or draining-tool This is a narrow spade of specially stout make; the blade is hollow and resembles an exaggerated gouge, and the advantage is that in digging out a rabbit the tool is very apt to catch under a root, when an ordinary spade may bend and become useless. —  The Amateur Poacher
  • Luncheon is "nuncheon." —  A Cotswold Village
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Etymologies (1)

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  1. Formerly also nunchion, nunchin, nuncion, nunscion, nuntion; apparently for *nunching (as luncheon for *lunching), from nunch, a piece, + - ing. As with the equivalent luncheon, also orig. dial., the termination lost meaning, and the word was altered by popular etymology to noonchion, and even in one case to noonshun, as if a repast taken when the laborers ‘shun’ the heat of ‘noon,’ from noon + shun; the association with noon being either accidental, or else due to the origination of nuncheon, as Skeat claims, in the rare Middle English nonechenche for *noneschenche, a donation for drink, literally ‘noon-drink,’ from none, noon, + schenche, a cup (hence ‘drink’), from schenchen, shenchen, shenken, skinken, give to drink: see noon and skink. The reduction of Middle English *noneschenche to nuncheon is irregular, but is possible, the form *noneschenche being awkward and unstable. Cf. noonmeat and bever.
 

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