Meaning & use
trail mix
Last updated
Meaning
noununcountable
A snack of nuts, dried fruit and sometimes seeds or chocolate, carried on walks because it is light and gives energy.
Grammar: Uncountable: some trail mix, a bag of trail mix.
Patterns
- a bag of trail mix
- trail mix with something
I packed a bag of trail mix for the hike.
She picked the chocolate chips out of her trail mix.
Homemade trail mix costs less than the kind sold in stores.
Common combinations
- bag of trail mix
- He opened a bag of trail mix at the summit.
- homemade trail mix
- Homemade trail mix lets you skip the raisins.
- pack trail mix
- Pack trail mix and water for the walk.
- nut-free trail mix
- The camp serves nut-free trail mix.
- snack on trail mix
- We snacked on trail mix during the climb.
Synonyms and how they differ
- gorp
- Gorp is an old camper's name for trail mix and is now rarer and more playful.
- snack mix
- Snack mix is broader and may include crackers or pretzels, which trail mix usually does not.
- nuts and raisins
- This names two typical parts, while trail mix means the full blended snack.
Word family
- trail noun
- a path through the countryside
- mix noun
- a combination of things
- trailhead noun
- the place where a trail begins
- trailblazer noun
- someone who leads the way
Commonly confused: trail mix or granola?
trail mix vs granola
Granola is baked oats and honey, often eaten with milk, whereas trail mix is mostly nuts and fruit eaten dry.
Practice
For the hike, we bought a bag of ___, a light snack of nuts and dried fruit.
Choose one answer.
Trail mix is the hiking snack of nuts and fruit. Cake mix is for baking and the other options are not snacks of that kind.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “trail mix”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.