It appears that I've made it through the 24 years of my life without having encountered the word gorp. You can imagine my surprise when, on a recent car trip, my girlfriend referred to the bag of peanuts, raisins and chocolate chips that I packed, asking "Where's the gorp?" Gorp came up in conversation again the other day, so I decided to do a little research. The origins of the word are cloudy at best. According to a Wikipedia entry, gorp may be a "backronym," an acronym created to match the letters of a word that already exists, standing for Good Old Raisins and Peanuts or Granola Oats Raisins and Peanuts. I'm skeptical of the latter because granola generally contains oats anyway, so that would be redundant. Apparently gorp is also known as scroggin in Australia, New Zealand, Britain and Iraq. Supposedly, this may also be an acronym.

[Photo: Wikipedia]World Wide Words says that scroggin may be based on "Sultanas, Currants, Raisins, Orange (peel), Ginger and Nuts." A 1913 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary says that gorp is a verb meaning "to eat greedily." The World Wide Words article also suggests that it may be derived from a variation on the word gawk, which conjures images of open mouths. Usually good for a boost of energy, blends of nuts and raisins are also sometimes called "student food," again according to the Wikipedia entry on gorp. It goes on to say that the term student food is derived from the German studentenfutter. Also, Gorp is apparently the name of a neighborhood in the village of Hilvarenbeek in the Netherlands.

I know this much: I've been perfectly happy to call gorp trail mix thus far and I think I'll continue to do so. Maybe I should start calling it scroggin, but I fear that a word like that must have other, far worse connotations.