hamsterkauf

We played briefly with the German word hamsterkauf  for the phenomenon of panic buying in the supermarkets, especially of toilet paper.  It doesn’t take much to amuse us these days. The German word breaks down into hamster meaning ‘hoarding’ (from the habit the animal has of stuffing food into its cheek pouches) combined with kauf  to buy.  Sadly it does not seem to be sticking around in English. It could be argued that hamsterkauf  combined hoarding and panic buying in one useful word.