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Everyone, the world over, enjoys savoury snacks, particularly dry, starchy ones. Far and away the most popular kind in the Anglosphere are the ones made from deep-fried (sometimes baked) thinly-sliced potato (sometimes other root vegetables), almost always salted, and very often flavoured in some way. In Britain, we call these crisps, whilst in America, they call them chips.

However, there are dry, starchy, savoury snacks that are not these. There are (taking UK examples) Twiglets, Mini Cheddars, Quavers, Skips, Cheesy Wotsits, tortilla chips, Hula Hoops, Scampi Fries, small rice cakes, pretzels, various Phileas Fogg thingies, etc. They are made of potato, maize, wheat, or frankly who knows what (wood pulp?), with plenty of salt and vegetable oil thrown in to ensure deliciousness. I wouldn't call these crisps.

So what can I call them? There is snack, but that is a much more general term, that just means a small amount of food eaten between meals. Do we have a word for these things or not?

A New Zealander friend calls all these things "chips, bro", but that doesn't seem at all right to me. However, it did set me to wondering if we had an equivalent term.

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    It's just savoury snacks isn't it? I can't think of anything that I'd call a savoury snack that isn't one of those items. You could make home-cooked snacks of course but that's unusual imo.
    – z7sg Ѫ
    Commented May 21, 2011 at 11:46
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    I know this is not a question about AmE. "Savoury snacks" or even "savory snacks" is not a phrase we use in the US. I was about to ask what they are, but I guess that's the gist of the question, isn't it?
    – Kit Z. Fox ♦
    Commented May 21, 2011 at 14:37
  • A friend reports that her French grandmother called such things magnie-magnia (pronounced something like manee-manya), but that this was probably a nonsense term she'd made up.
    – Tom Anderson
    Commented May 21, 2011 at 14:50
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    @Kit: It's not a term we use in the UK either. The problem is that i don't have a term to use! I think the classic US example is the Cheeto (basically the same thing as a Cheesy Wotsit, i think), which is clearly like a potato chip, but equally clearly is not a potato chip, being neither made of potato, nor chipped off anything, nor making any attempt to pretende that they are.
    – Tom Anderson
    Commented May 21, 2011 at 14:51
  • That's funny, I was sure the question didn't originally include the exact words "savoury snacks" but the revision history seems to say it was always there \-:
    – hippietrail
    Commented May 22, 2011 at 5:57

7 Answers 7

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"Nibbles" is what they would collectively called if at a party. I think that's the closest you'll get.

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  • Nibbles is pretty good. I tend to think that these things only become nibbles when poured into a bowl at a party, but that term does cover exactly this range of foods - or would you call olives nibbles?
    – Tom Anderson
    Commented May 21, 2011 at 14:33
  • I like nibbles. It sounds very pleasant. This is probably what we would use in the US, or maybe "nibblers".
    – Kit Z. Fox ♦
    Commented May 21, 2011 at 14:40
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    @Tom Anderson: Nibbles certainly includes olives so far as I'm concerned. But crisps are nibbles too, so I'm a bit flummoxed by OP's question title. It apparently seeks a word that means exactly and only Nibbles, excluding crisps. A bit like asking for a word that means All pizza toppings except pepperoni. Then someone else will ask for another word meaning the same, but not including anchovies. Where will it all end?
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented May 21, 2011 at 15:55
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    @FumbleFingers: It will end in a nirvana of terminological precision! I would be more than happy with a term that included crisps. Including olives seems a step too far, though.
    – Tom Anderson
    Commented May 21, 2011 at 19:30
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    @Tom Anderson: We can be masters of our own linguistic and alimentary destiny! I don't much like Twiglets, so I'll start by sharing with you mmmpph. Which you can take to mean "Assorted nibbles, all types except Twiglets and olives".
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented May 21, 2011 at 21:57
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As a Brit I would still refer to Wotsits and Quavers as crisps. Anything that comes in a crisps-bag is crisps to me.

All the other things you mentioned I would call nibbles.

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    Quavers, Hula-Hoops, and Skips are certainly very crisp-like. I bridle at calling them crisps, though. Crisps are crisps! And Wotsits are even more different. As for bags, isn't a Mini Cheddars bag substantially the same as a Hula Hoops bag? Can it even be legitimate to classify the contents by the nature of the bag?
    – Tom Anderson
    Commented May 21, 2011 at 15:03
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    @Tom - mini cheddars are an edge case, but Quavers, Hula-Hoops and Skips are called crisps by most people in the UK whether you like it or not!
    – Mark Heath
    Commented May 21, 2011 at 15:54
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    @Tom Anderson: I'm with you. Crisps and Hula-Hoops may meet up at various social gatherings. Sit on the same side-table, even. But they're not married, and never shall be, so they can't share a name.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented May 21, 2011 at 22:08
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    Maybe we have identified one of the elusive differences between the two terms crisps and chips! I'm pretty sure I've seen British and Irish call our extruded snacks crisps here in Australia but us locals would never call them chips.
    – hippietrail
    Commented May 22, 2011 at 6:02
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    Quavers and Hula Hoops are both made of potato - just not slices of potato.
    – JBRWilkinson
    Commented Nov 25, 2011 at 16:45
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In Dutch, we call this subset of snacks 'zoutjes' ('zout' salt + 'je' diminutive +'s' plural). So salties perhaps? :-)

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    Not a word that yet exists in English, afaik, but a good one; perhaps we should borrow it!
    – PLL
    Commented May 21, 2011 at 11:40
  • That's a good word. Does zoutjes exclude or include crisps?
    – Tom Anderson
    Commented May 21, 2011 at 12:25
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    I want to +1 this because I like it but since it's not an English word it should've been a comment instead of an answer.
    – hippietrail
    Commented May 22, 2011 at 6:00
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    @Tom: according to the dictionary definition, zoutjes include any kind of cold, fat, savoury snack that you can eat in front of the TV or at birthday parties. So yes, crisps, other starchy things, but also peanuts, pretzels, prawn crackers & stuff like that.
    – Nelleke
    Commented May 22, 2011 at 8:15
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    @hippietrail, Nelleke is recommending salties, which is an attempt to coin an English word. Nelleke, you might want to bold the word
    – Unreason
    Commented Nov 25, 2011 at 11:21
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In Australia where we moved from crisps to chips several decades ago there is no special set term for crunchy snacks generally but there is the fairly common phrase "savoury snack". (You may also choose to omit the "u" if you prefer).

UPDATE

While Googling further on this answer I came across what I take to be an unappetizing industry term, "extruded snack", which covers many of these kinds of snacks except chips. For instance in Australia this would cover the popular Twisties™, Cheezels™, and Burger Rings™.

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    Indeed it doesn't even cover chips/crisps but I thought the OP or some casual browsers might find it interesting or helpful nonetheless. But now I have to find out what a Twiglet is (-:
    – hippietrail
    Commented May 21, 2011 at 11:46
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    Extruded snack is a good term - precise, already in use, and mildly repellent, which is an ideal fit for this kind of industrial foodstuff.
    – Tom Anderson
    Commented May 21, 2011 at 14:35
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    +1 for extruded snack and Burger Rings, which actually caused me to throw up a little in my mouth. Seriously, what is a Burger Ring? That sounds disgusting, like pork rinds.
    – Kit Z. Fox ♦
    Commented May 21, 2011 at 14:39
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    My New Zealander friend reports that Burger Rings are one of the best kinds of chips. Also, "disgusting, like pork rinds" is a confusing construction, since pork scratchings (which i think is what we call pork rinds) are delicious (but, for clarity, are not extruded snacks).
    – Tom Anderson
    Commented May 21, 2011 at 19:33
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    @TomAnderson - hear hear. Pork rinds (also Pork Scratchings in the UK) are delicious.
    – immutabl
    Commented Mar 5, 2012 at 10:26
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It isn't catchy and doesn't apply globally (e.g. Pringles are a bit of an edge case here being potato based but not 'chipped off' a potato.), but corn[-based] snack seems to be the description favoured by manufacturers and food labellers. C.f. Monster Munch, Wotsits, Onion rings/Ringos, Frazzles, Space Raiders etc. which are popular non-potato-based snacks in the UK.

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This one may not be particularly common. But it really grinds my gears when I do hear it, so I probably overestimate the actual frequency of occurrence...

snacky-poos

Aaarrrgggghhhh!

EDIT: I see someone's seen fit to downvote this one. It doesn't make sense to suppose that's because they don't like the term (after all, I don't either, but I still posted it). So I'll assume at least someone doesn't believe it's used at all. It's a spoken rather than written form, obviously, but here's a published instance from the weekly American marketing trade journal Brandweek (now Adweek), and here are 1500 instances from Google on the Internet at large.

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    Agreed, it is foul. I'm now going to have to search english.stackexchange for the execrable 'amazeballs'. Phew. pbs.twimg.com/media/CrqlFojWgAAtmbp.jpg
    – immutabl
    Commented Sep 6, 2016 at 10:50
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    @5arx: I guess the crappy SO site search facilities don't index comments. A Google site-specific search finds it here and here.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Sep 6, 2016 at 13:24
  • Then humanity (and Stack Exchange) could well be doomed.
    – immutabl
    Commented Sep 26, 2016 at 12:39
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Probably the most accurate description would be "salty" or "crispy" snacks. I think most listeners would understand what you meant by that.

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