заморить червячка (zamorit' chervyachka)

Literally: Starve the worm

Example: “До ужина далеко, давай заморим червячка.” — Dinner is a long way off; let's grab a bite.

English equivalent: To grab a bite

Origin: A relatively recent addition to Russian, dating only to the 1800s, and two theories compete for its source. One treats it as a direct calque of the French idiom tuer le ver — literally "to kill the worm" — which in French originally meant drinking a shot of spirits on an empty stomach, a sense that has since faded out of use in Russian while the phrase itself survived with a new meaning attached. A second, more homegrown theory ties it to old Russian folk belief about intestinal worms, popularly blamed for causing hunger pangs, with a drink taken on an empty stomach thought capable of "starving out" or pacifying the worms responsible. Whichever explanation is correct, the modern Russian sense has moved well past both — simply, having a small snack to take the edge off real hunger.