Maunch

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Eating something by chewing it slowly and noisily, often with the mouth open
2. To munch on food with loud, steady chewing, as a dialect or Scots term for eating
3. Chewing food with a crunching, champing sound while eating greedily

Etymology: Maunch is a verb that has nothing to do with chewing, despite its close look-alike "munch." Its ancestor is the Latin "manica," a sleeve or glove, which passed into Old French as "manche," meaning sleeve, and then into Middle English as "maunche." The word thus began as a garment term, and the verb grew out of the idea of a sleeve. The source word "manche" survives in modern English as "manche," a doublet of the same origin, meaning a sleeve or the hand-covering part of a garment. Maunch and manche are therefore two forms of one Latin word, separated by centuries of French and English usage. The confusion with "munch" is a coincidence of spelling and sound rather than a shared history. "Munch" is a separate word with its own origins, so the resemblance is accidental.

Synonyms: munch, chew, champ, chomp, crunch