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Merriam-Webster Says Hot Dog Is A Sandwich, Sends Credibility For A Toss

10 months ago

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Now, before you ball your eyes out or tear your hair apart, hear this: Merriam-Webster said that the hot dog is a type. Not that it makes things any better. Because technically a sandwich must at all times have TWO pieces of bread. Whereas, a hot dog is a frankfurter served in ONE long bread roll. And remember how primary math was all about the 1-2-3?

The mayhem started last weekend when the massively trusted American English thesaurus and dictionary wished its followers a great Memorial Day Weekend on Twitter. The post linked to a slideshow that talked about 10 different kinds of sandwiches, which also included the hot dog.

Merriam-Webster cites various rules to prove its argument right. Here’s what it had to say:

We know: the idea that a hot dog is a sandwich is heresy to some of you. But given that the definition of sandwich is “two or more slices of bread or a split roll having a filling in between,” there is no sensible way around it. If you want a meatball sandwich on a split roll to be a kind of sandwich, then you have to accept that a hot dog is also a kind of sandwich.

You could hinge your anti-hot-dog-as-sandwich argument on whether the hot dog sausage qualifies as a “filling,” but if you choose to interpret filling narrowly as only “a food mixture used to fill pastry or sandwiches,” rather than broadly as “something used to fill a cavity, container, or depression,” then you’re not going to allow any single-item filling to qualify a food item as a sandwich—which means there can be no thing as a peanut butter sandwich or a bologna (or even baloney) sandwich.

Nope, still not sold to the idea. Interestingly enough though, Merriam-Webster’s website defines a hot dog as “a small cooked sausage that is mild in flavor and is usually served in a long roll (called a hot dog bun)”. Nowhere is the term ‘sandwich’ mentioned. Confused much, Merriam-Webster?

 

Meanwhile, the Oxford Dictionary sales and online traction sky-rocketed. And here’s what a sandwich does NOT look like.hot-dog-conveyor

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Binge eater by day and binge watcher by night, Ankita is fluent in food, film, and Internet. When she’s not obsessing over the hottest trends, tacos, and the perfect author’s bio, you can find her under a pile of Jeffery Archer’s novels or looking for the nearest wine shop.