The reality of the matter is that we do not decide what is, and what is not, a sandwich based on logical criteria. Like the definition of all words, we make a gut judgment on it. Definitions don't actually follow rules.
1. Is a hamburger a sandwich? 2. If not, is a chicken sandwich--which is a hamburger with chicken instead of beef--a sandwich? 3. If yes, is an ice cream sandwich a sandwich? 4. If yes, does a hamburger remain a sandwich if its bun is replaced by a slab of meat (this is a real food item in America)?
If you say a hot dog is not a sandwich because it has one piece of bread, then see the following:
4. If you put a sausage between two slices of bread and staple them together, does it therefore become a hot dog? 5. Is a subway sandwich--which, like a hot dog, has only a single piece of bread--a sandwich?
I wish there was a third option my friend, because my answer is that nothing is a sandwich which was not held in the hands of John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, which means that while no hot dog was ever held in his hands, certainly a time traveler going back in time could grant unto him a hot dog which, when placed firmly in his hand(s) and devoured would transform itself into "a sandwich" in that very moment, as would an open-faced sandwich, a slice of pizza or a burrito.
I deny aristocratic titles their hold on the culinary appellations I employ at all times, but he can have the word for himself.
Just as the spiritual Monk is set apart from the Fighter class, complete with its own kits thereof, so is the meaty Hamburger set apart from Sandwich category.
Others have engaged the Hot Dog-Sandwich debate in the past, but they have not gone far enough in exploring the scope of sandwich ontology. Patrick Hruby, addressed this a couple years ago by citing the dictionary:
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a sandwich is "two or more slices of bread with a filling such as meat or cheese placed between them, or a partly split long or round roll containing a filling."
But appeals to etymological authority get us nowhere. I've seen definitions that omit the mention of non-meats (essentially defining the grilled cheese sandwich out of existence) or the presence of a partly split long or round roll (rendering the existence of such manifestly sandwiched meals as the hoagie or sub impossible).
Though appeals to history often create stifling parameters, the alleged story of the sandwich's invention – the Earl of Sandwich needed a way to enjoy a portable meal without utensils or much mess – should inform our approach to understanding the sandwich's apotheosis as, ultimately, an American form pairing necessity with an elegance of individual expression. That the mass adoption of the sandwich during the industrial revolution followed his lead (and provides ample evidence as to the utility and common appearance of the sandwich as a meal) likewise should inform our conceptions of a normative sandwich state.
Thus the Great Hot Dog-Sandwich Debate should be over as soon as it begins: if a sandwich is a portable, relatively tidy meal of meat inside a bread conveyance, the fact that the bun is sliced lengthwise but not all the way through affects nothing in this discussion. The bread is in essence no different when fully sliced and presenting a more familiar sandwich form. To quibble further, one might say, is to simply argue about hinges.
Stopping here, though, is actually the action of a fool – because this conclusion naturally opens up further counterarguments to sandwich ontology that sandwich reactionaries invariably make in bad faith. For instance, the various Charles Krauthammers of the sandwich punditocracy employ the "slippery slope" argument to deny the hot dog's sandwich-status by going into hysterics about a taco being a sandwich – which, of course, it manifestly is.
Sandwich segregationists generally prefer to designate tacos and the like with the separate-but-equal designation of "wraps" – which is a distinction without a difference. Arguing against the wrap's inclusion in the sandwich category merely returns us to the hinge contention militating against the hot dog. Its functionality, however, easily demonstrates a means of conveying meat or other fillers with portability and a lack of utensils. Thus, not only is a taco a sandwich, but so is a burrito (and its Levantine antecedent, the gyro) – the only difference being that one is more neatly packaged than the other, analogous to the difference between a sloppy-pressed reuben and the near-hermetic sandwich tubes of Jimmy Johns. (Meanwhile, the taquito is a finger sandwich.)
But! you might protest, what of the nature of the wrap itself? Well, what of it? If you wish to argue that the substance encasing the meat in a wrap cannot qualify as bread because it is too flat, then the rabbi Hillel the Elder's willingness to dine on unleavened sandwiches over 2,000 years ago dispatches that argument. A flour tortilla is just a flat loaf of bread without yeast in it and, as for a corn tortilla, that is processed just like wheat flour.
(If you, however, wish to argue that it is not the processing but the corn itself that cannot become bread, then you have just radically postulated the nonexistence of cornbread, whose breadedness has heretofore never been in dispute.)
Still, there are some limits to what makes a sandwich. The presence of some form of bread alone is not criterion enough. As soon as "bread" transitions from noun to verb form it transgresses the space between sandwich and non-sandwich. Breading food does not make a sandwich, tempura offers no challenge to our understanding, and fried chicken is merely seasoned chicken. Likewise, while the flaky pastry of a Croissan'wich makes for a kind of sandwich, the same pastry baked around a steak filet does not make beef wellington a sandwich.
Here, then, we can best understand the boundaries of sandwich taxonomy via intentionalism. While breads might abound in the world's cuisine, whether they are employed as a means of making a reasonably tidy portable meal limns the sandwich classification. Breaking off bits of flatbread to dip into hummus does not create hummus sandwiches. (You know damn well that you are snacking.) On the other hand, a calzone is a sandwich, while a pizza is not. That a diner may adapt the shape of a sliced subsection of the latter to create a portable meal does not reflect the intent of its crafting; that is a secondary, user-generated adaptation. The former, however occasionally ill-crafted, possesses an inherent form that is both portable and independent of utensil intervention. (To argue that the presence of sloppy, boiling-hot calzones belies their sandwich nature is a debate on elaboration, not intention, like saying that a leaky building proves that buildings are not a form of shelter.)
This brings us naturally to the biggest red herring of the sandwich debate – the open-faced sandwich, which, via an intentionalist approach, is not a sandwich at all. The open-faced sandwich is a plate-bound horror, largely dependent on utensils and usually drenched in a humiliating amount or variety of sauces, that, if eaten by hand, make your face look like the aftermath of a hollandaise bombing in a farmer's market. That an open-face sandwich is named sandwich makes it a sandwich as much as calling the team the "New York Giants" makes the New Jersey-based games played in New York. As my friend Chareth Cutestory (a pseudonym) once said before security dragged him kicking and screaming away from a city council meeting, "AN OPEN-FACED SANDWICH IS A PIZZA!".
Please don't misunderstand me: I argue for these boundaries not because I fear some slippery slope of sandwich identity, but because I want to better appreciate the new sandwiches I encounter and not be led astray by mislabeled foodstuffs that alter our perception of the sandwich universe. I am, at heart, a sandwich expansionist and will always argue for inclusionary sandwichism.
But if we accept that a neat meal package of either hinged or wrapping breads or the classic two-slice model are the ontological bases for a sandwich, suddenly we must introduce new food to that classification – arepas, banh mi, a disruptive new egg roll out of Shanghai the size of a football or an infant. The sandwich evolves and broadens as we do, without abandoning the intent that informs it and animates it. A hot dog is a sandwich. A taco is a sandwich.
Seems I'm not fluent in English at all. Shows what you know, all English teachers throughout the years!
I was under the delusion that slice of bread + thing(s) = sandwich.
So what then is the above? Most common meal there is and I don't even know the word for it
This question for English-speaking still stands: what do you call a single slice of bread with things on it?
(the Dutch word would be 'boterham', though it has nothing it doesn't necessarily have to have butter and ham on it, could as well be margarine and cheese, or peanut butter, or hummus, or whatever you want).
I know some will undoubtedly consider me a sandwich justice warrior for this, but I don't care. I stand by my sandwiches.
Know Thy Sandwich
I present to you Hammy, level 3 dual-class ham/cheese sandwich, and Strawbs, level 1 strawberry jam sandwich. They're about to embark on a short journey that will no doubt end in their demise.
I know some will undoubtedly consider me a sandwich justice warrior for this, but I don't care. I stand by my sandwiches.
Please. Enough!
I am absolutely fed up with all you '2 bread and filler in between' fanatics dictating what I can and can't call a sandwich. If I want to make a sandwich with a single soft roll, taking care not to slice through the hinge, I will! If I want to get a lump of mechanically separated meat and stick it in a roll and call it a hot-dog sandwich I darn well will*
When I was a boy I used to eat jellied eels. Now my high street is full of sandwich shops and subway chains and high falutin' hotels serving dainty little triangle cut sandwiches on bone china plates.
Enough I say!
I want my pie 'n' mash jellied eel shop back. You can take your sandwich justice warrior rubbish and stick it in the bread bin!
(*I realise this goes against my earlier espoused views, but I have just discovered that whilst sandwiches are exempt from sales taxes here in Europe, hot dogs are not, and this question has therefore assumed rather greater importance than I first thought. The fact that I have just received a rather large donation from the 'Hot Dogs are indeed Sandwiches' Campaign has absolutely nothing to do with my damascene change of mind)
In where I live it is called "baguette sandwich". So if its name is "hotdog sandwich" it is a sandwich. But hotdog is hotdog and sandwich made with something then it is sandwich, i.e. Toast sandwich. Umm come to think of it, "corndog" is called "hotdog" here, very confusing heh.
What if you take your open-faced sandwich, and fold it over in the middle, in order to eat more neatly, without dropping the ingredients onto yourself? Isn't that quantitatively the same as eating a half of a sandwich, except perhaps with double helpings of the non-bread elements?
I think a "sandwich" is qualitatively meant to be "bread holding something else that would be very messy to eat in the hands, without utensils, unless one holds it in the hands using the bread."
The default "sandwich" is a finger food using two separate pieces of bread to hold the interior ingredients, ranging widely from cheese to raw vegetables to meats to peanut butter and on and on with countless variations of other flavoring ingredients. But the broad concept contains subsets of types and variations. The "open-faced sandwich" uses one piece of bread instead of two. The "hot dog" specifically contains a pork sausage of the type that is called a "wiener", inside a split oblong bun with toppings that typically include mustard, ketchup, relish, and sometimes onions, cheese, and/or chili. The "hamburger" is a specific type of sandwich made with a split round bun containing a ground beef patty, and toppings that typically include mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise or other flavored and spiced oil-based sauces, with optional toppings that include pickles, onions, cheese, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, and lettuce.
Is a pizza a sandwich? I'll group it with the pie family, since the non-bread ingredients are actually baked into the crust in an oven. Also, in English language, we often call it a "pizza pie", but never a "pizza sandwich". Extending on this theme, I would posit that any food that bakes its ingredients into a bread product does not qualify as a sandwich. A sandwich has its ingredients placed into the bread *after* the bread has been baked, and that is a definitive difference between a sandwich and a pie or cake.
A "roll-up" then probably qualifies as a sandwich, as long as the ingredients are rolled into the pita or other bread product after the bread has already been baked. Heating up a sandwich after it's made does not change its status as a sandwich.
I'd like to add that if your "sandwich" is one of the commonly eaten (in America) specific types of sandwiches, you will confuse your reader or listener as to exactly what food you are thinking of if you do not use the name of its specific type. If you say "I am eating a sandwich", when you are actually eating a hot dog, a hamburger, a wrap, a taco, or a burrito, your audience will confuse your meaning to be the default meaning of "sandwich" as "two pieces of bread containing other ingredients that would be messy to eat in the hands unless held in the bread". So, if you are eating a sandwich of a particular type, you need to use the name of that specific food item.
I stand by sandwich as a term with no referrant outside of things held in the hands of John Montagu. I have never in my life eaten a sandwich, but nearly every item mentioned in this thread in both for and against columns, when eaten without utensils by John Montagu, would have been a sandwich. The term has a broad definition that includes pizza in my opinion, but no one should use it because it is one more thing named after an aristocrat/aristocratic title and we need to move away from top-down hegemony both in terms of economics, politics and the nomenclature of our foods.
While I am personally not a sandwich justice warrior--wait. I do like checking things off lists. Perhaps I am a sandwich justice warrior? I will spend a moment in deep self-reflection at a later time, when I am not pressed with the urgent need to complete this forum posting.
Anyway! While many people--whether they be sandwich justice warriors, priests, wizards, or rogues--have made excellent points which I have not read because I lost interest in the topic, I stand by my earlier refutation.
You see, in my culinary philosophy, which I learned at an early age at my Carthaginian mother's knee, the sandwich occupies a taxonomic position equivalent to that of the hot dog, hamburger, taco, folded-over-post-baking pizza, etc. I suspect that those who consider themselves sandwich inclusionists classify the sandwich as being hierarchically superior to these and other arguably similar foodstuffs. To which I say, call it what you want, and I'll call it what I want, and we can enjoy our delicious lunches peaceably.
I'm surprised that the thread has made it to a second page. This was resolved by science years ago.
Sandwich is operationally defined as bread surrounding an edible center and, in a study of 60 Hot Dog stands in New York City, 58 of them sold items called 'hot dogs' that were composed of bread and more or less edible centers. Hot dogs are sandwiches. It's science.
Now someone steeped in postmodern fibbertygibber might argue that I have done nothing more than transform a contestible position into an operational definition which lends my argument a veneer of scientific legitimacy and wins the argument only by slight of hand. But such a critique would distract us from an important point: I have won the argument. Me. I win.
I'm going to start referring to eating as "Englanding" so I can say I england my sandwich and have two aristocratic titles in any sentence where I refer to eating something edible between or wrapped in bread. I mean, sure no King or Queen of England invented eating, but neither did any Earl of Sandwich invent eating stuff inside of bread so I figure I'm safe to stack the privilege of hereditary fame and wealth into a sentence as many times as possible until all of my language is just referring to some titular slice of geography.
Anyway, I'm off to england a dover or two, I might end up englanding a couple languedocs if I'm still feeling hungry. I'm saving the transylvanias I have in the fridge to england tomorrow though.
Let's just clear this. You are stating that my cucumber-sandwich , my grilled sandwich , and the sandwich-sructured composite , what with my collegues working, are not considered as sandwich at all?
I'm going to start referring to eating as "Englanding" so I can say I england my sandwich and have two aristocratic titles in any sentence where I refer to eating something edible between or wrapped in bread. I mean, sure no King or Queen of England invented eating, but neither did any Earl of Sandwich invent eating stuff inside of bread so I figure I'm safe to stack the privilege of hereditary fame and wealth into a sentence as many times as possible until all of my language is just referring to some titular slice of geography.
Anyway, I'm off to england a dover or two, I might end up englanding a couple languedocs if I'm still feeling hungry. I'm saving the transylvanias I have in the fridge to england tomorrow though.
You should make your sandwich by putting one of Lord Salsbury's steaks between two slices of bread.
Comments
1. Is a hamburger a sandwich?
2. If not, is a chicken sandwich--which is a hamburger with chicken instead of beef--a sandwich?
3. If yes, is an ice cream sandwich a sandwich?
4. If yes, does a hamburger remain a sandwich if its bun is replaced by a slab of meat (this is a real food item in America)?
If you say a hot dog is not a sandwich because it has one piece of bread, then see the following:
4. If you put a sausage between two slices of bread and staple them together, does it therefore become a hot dog?
5. Is a subway sandwich--which, like a hot dog, has only a single piece of bread--a sandwich?
An icecream sandwich is a sandwich as well: bread - icecream - bread (baked dough = bread)
4. no, it is no longer a sandwich once the baked dough is removed.
why would you staple two slices of bread?
5. It is a single piece of bread, cut in two.
The last question: so you can understand the world slightly better.
I deny aristocratic titles their hold on the culinary appellations I employ at all times, but he can have the word for himself.
Just as the spiritual Monk is set apart from the Fighter class, complete with its own kits thereof, so is the meaty Hamburger set apart from Sandwich category.
An ice cream sandwich is also not a sandwich.
Though appeals to history often create stifling parameters, the alleged story of the sandwich's invention – the Earl of Sandwich needed a way to enjoy a portable meal without utensils or much mess – should inform our approach to understanding the sandwich's apotheosis as, ultimately, an American form pairing necessity with an elegance of individual expression. That the mass adoption of the sandwich during the industrial revolution followed his lead (and provides ample evidence as to the utility and common appearance of the sandwich as a meal) likewise should inform our conceptions of a normative sandwich state.
Thus the Great Hot Dog-Sandwich Debate should be over as soon as it begins: if a sandwich is a portable, relatively tidy meal of meat inside a bread conveyance, the fact that the bun is sliced lengthwise but not all the way through affects nothing in this discussion. The bread is in essence no different when fully sliced and presenting a more familiar sandwich form. To quibble further, one might say, is to simply argue about hinges.
Stopping here, though, is actually the action of a fool – because this conclusion naturally opens up further counterarguments to sandwich ontology that sandwich reactionaries invariably make in bad faith. For instance, the various Charles Krauthammers of the sandwich punditocracy employ the "slippery slope" argument to deny the hot dog's sandwich-status by going into hysterics about a taco being a sandwich – which, of course, it manifestly is.
Sandwich segregationists generally prefer to designate tacos and the like with the separate-but-equal designation of "wraps" – which is a distinction without a difference. Arguing against the wrap's inclusion in the sandwich category merely returns us to the hinge contention militating against the hot dog. Its functionality, however, easily demonstrates a means of conveying meat or other fillers with portability and a lack of utensils. Thus, not only is a taco a sandwich, but so is a burrito (and its Levantine antecedent, the gyro) – the only difference being that one is more neatly packaged than the other, analogous to the difference between a sloppy-pressed reuben and the near-hermetic sandwich tubes of Jimmy Johns. (Meanwhile, the taquito is a finger sandwich.)
But! you might protest, what of the nature of the wrap itself? Well, what of it? If you wish to argue that the substance encasing the meat in a wrap cannot qualify as bread because it is too flat, then the rabbi Hillel the Elder's willingness to dine on unleavened sandwiches over 2,000 years ago dispatches that argument. A flour tortilla is just a flat loaf of bread without yeast in it and, as for a corn tortilla, that is processed just like wheat flour.
(If you, however, wish to argue that it is not the processing but the corn itself that cannot become bread, then you have just radically postulated the nonexistence of cornbread, whose breadedness has heretofore never been in dispute.)
Still, there are some limits to what makes a sandwich. The presence of some form of bread alone is not criterion enough. As soon as "bread" transitions from noun to verb form it transgresses the space between sandwich and non-sandwich. Breading food does not make a sandwich, tempura offers no challenge to our understanding, and fried chicken is merely seasoned chicken. Likewise, while the flaky pastry of a Croissan'wich makes for a kind of sandwich, the same pastry baked around a steak filet does not make beef wellington a sandwich.
Here, then, we can best understand the boundaries of sandwich taxonomy via intentionalism. While breads might abound in the world's cuisine, whether they are employed as a means of making a reasonably tidy portable meal limns the sandwich classification. Breaking off bits of flatbread to dip into hummus does not create hummus sandwiches. (You know damn well that you are snacking.) On the other hand, a calzone is a sandwich, while a pizza is not. That a diner may adapt the shape of a sliced subsection of the latter to create a portable meal does not reflect the intent of its crafting; that is a secondary, user-generated adaptation. The former, however occasionally ill-crafted, possesses an inherent form that is both portable and independent of utensil intervention. (To argue that the presence of sloppy, boiling-hot calzones belies their sandwich nature is a debate on elaboration, not intention, like saying that a leaky building proves that buildings are not a form of shelter.)
This brings us naturally to the biggest red herring of the sandwich debate – the open-faced sandwich, which, via an intentionalist approach, is not a sandwich at all. The open-faced sandwich is a plate-bound horror, largely dependent on utensils and usually drenched in a humiliating amount or variety of sauces, that, if eaten by hand, make your face look like the aftermath of a hollandaise bombing in a farmer's market. That an open-face sandwich is named sandwich makes it a sandwich as much as calling the team the "New York Giants" makes the New Jersey-based games played in New York. As my friend Chareth Cutestory (a pseudonym) once said before security dragged him kicking and screaming away from a city council meeting, "AN OPEN-FACED SANDWICH IS A PIZZA!".
Please don't misunderstand me: I argue for these boundaries not because I fear some slippery slope of sandwich identity, but because I want to better appreciate the new sandwiches I encounter and not be led astray by mislabeled foodstuffs that alter our perception of the sandwich universe. I am, at heart, a sandwich expansionist and will always argue for inclusionary sandwichism.
But if we accept that a neat meal package of either hinged or wrapping breads or the classic two-slice model are the ontological bases for a sandwich, suddenly we must introduce new food to that classification – arepas, banh mi, a disruptive new egg roll out of Shanghai the size of a football or an infant. The sandwich evolves and broadens as we do, without abandoning the intent that informs it and animates it. A hot dog is a sandwich. A taco is a sandwich.
Thank you for reading friends.
(the Dutch word would be 'boterham', though it has nothing it doesn't necessarily have to have butter and ham on it, could as well be margarine and cheese, or peanut butter, or hummus, or whatever you want).
I know some will undoubtedly consider me a sandwich justice warrior for this, but I don't care. I stand by my sandwiches.
Know Thy Sandwich
I present to you Hammy, level 3 dual-class ham/cheese sandwich, and Strawbs, level 1 strawberry jam sandwich. They're about to embark on a short journey that will no doubt end in their demise.
I am absolutely fed up with all you '2 bread and filler in between' fanatics dictating what I can and can't call a sandwich. If I want to make a sandwich with a single soft roll, taking care not to slice through the hinge, I will! If I want to get a lump of mechanically separated meat and stick it in a roll and call it a hot-dog sandwich I darn well will*
When I was a boy I used to eat jellied eels. Now my high street is full of sandwich shops and subway chains and high falutin' hotels serving dainty little triangle cut sandwiches on bone china plates.
Enough I say!
I want my pie 'n' mash jellied eel shop back. You can take your sandwich justice warrior rubbish and stick it in the bread bin!
(*I realise this goes against my earlier espoused views, but I have just discovered that whilst sandwiches are exempt from sales taxes here in Europe, hot dogs are not, and this question has therefore assumed rather greater importance than I first thought. The fact that I have just received a rather large donation from the 'Hot Dogs are indeed Sandwiches' Campaign has absolutely nothing to do with my damascene change of mind)
So if its name is "hotdog sandwich" it is a sandwich.
But hotdog is hotdog and sandwich made with something then it is sandwich, i.e. Toast sandwich.
Umm come to think of it, "corndog" is called "hotdog" here, very confusing heh.
I think a "sandwich" is qualitatively meant to be "bread holding something else that would be very messy to eat in the hands, without utensils, unless one holds it in the hands using the bread."
The default "sandwich" is a finger food using two separate pieces of bread to hold the interior ingredients, ranging widely from cheese to raw vegetables to meats to peanut butter and on and on with countless variations of other flavoring ingredients. But the broad concept contains subsets of types and variations. The "open-faced sandwich" uses one piece of bread instead of two. The "hot dog" specifically contains a pork sausage of the type that is called a "wiener", inside a split oblong bun with toppings that typically include mustard, ketchup, relish, and sometimes onions, cheese, and/or chili. The "hamburger" is a specific type of sandwich made with a split round bun containing a ground beef patty, and toppings that typically include mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise or other flavored and spiced oil-based sauces, with optional toppings that include pickles, onions, cheese, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, and lettuce.
Is a pizza a sandwich? I'll group it with the pie family, since the non-bread ingredients are actually baked into the crust in an oven. Also, in English language, we often call it a "pizza pie", but never a "pizza sandwich". Extending on this theme, I would posit that any food that bakes its ingredients into a bread product does not qualify as a sandwich. A sandwich has its ingredients placed into the bread *after* the bread has been baked, and that is a definitive difference between a sandwich and a pie or cake.
A "roll-up" then probably qualifies as a sandwich, as long as the ingredients are rolled into the pita or other bread product after the bread has already been baked. Heating up a sandwich after it's made does not change its status as a sandwich.
I'd like to add that if your "sandwich" is one of the commonly eaten (in America) specific types of sandwiches, you will confuse your reader or listener as to exactly what food you are thinking of if you do not use the name of its specific type. If you say "I am eating a sandwich", when you are actually eating a hot dog, a hamburger, a wrap, a taco, or a burrito, your audience will confuse your meaning to be the default meaning of "sandwich" as "two pieces of bread containing other ingredients that would be messy to eat in the hands unless held in the bread". So, if you are eating a sandwich of a particular type, you need to use the name of that specific food item.
¡Viva la Revolución!
Anyway! While many people--whether they be sandwich justice warriors, priests, wizards, or rogues--have made excellent points which I have not read because I lost interest in the topic, I stand by my earlier refutation.
You see, in my culinary philosophy, which I learned at an early age at my Carthaginian mother's knee, the sandwich occupies a taxonomic position equivalent to that of the hot dog, hamburger, taco, folded-over-post-baking pizza, etc. I suspect that those who consider themselves sandwich inclusionists classify the sandwich as being hierarchically superior to these and other arguably similar foodstuffs. To which I say, call it what you want, and I'll call it what I want, and we can enjoy our delicious lunches peaceably.
Sandwich is operationally defined as bread surrounding an edible center and, in a study of 60 Hot Dog stands in New York City, 58 of them sold items called 'hot dogs' that were composed of bread and more or less edible centers. Hot dogs are sandwiches. It's science.
Now someone steeped in postmodern fibbertygibber might argue that I have done nothing more than transform a contestible position into an operational definition which lends my argument a veneer of scientific legitimacy and wins the argument only by slight of hand. But such a critique would distract us from an important point: I have won the argument. Me. I win.
Anyway, I'm off to england a dover or two, I might end up englanding a couple languedocs if I'm still feeling hungry. I'm saving the transylvanias I have in the fridge to england tomorrow though.
, my grilled sandwich
, and the sandwich-sructured composite
, what with my collegues working, are not considered as sandwich at all?