The word nosh and the word snoop originally denoted the same thing: the act of eating something in secret. Both words derive from Germanic sources: the German naschen, meaning to eat surreptitiously, is the source of the Yiddish nosh, which English adopted in the 1960s; the Dutch snoepen, meaning to appropriate and consume dainties in a clandestine manner, is the source of snoop, which appeared in English in the mid nineteenth century. Of these two words, nosh has retained a meaning fairly close to that of its German source: it now means to snack, whether in public or private. Snoop, on the other hand, has lost its associations with food, and now simply means to pry into other people’s affairs.