Never in our lifetime has our nation felt more us-versus-them. We can’t agree even on the most benignly agreeable topics. Whatever the issue, we must stand our ground, hold our positions firm, and ridicule others for daring to own a differing viewpoint. We must be on a team.
And so we’ve reached the point where we must declare where our allegiances lie in regards to sandwiches. Specifically: What constitutes a sandwich? Is the line demarcating a sandwich clearly defined or is that border in disputed territory?
Twitter user @matttomic posted a matrix chart that, while not clarifying the what is/isn’t a sandwich question, lays out the nine positions one might reside on the sandwich definition spectrum. He sets his parameters based on your philosophy on starch structure and internal ingredients:
The debate over the interpretation of the word “sandwich” has been spirited in recent years, coalescing around the question “Is a hot dog a sandwich?” Most prominent (and most vigorously argued) has been the onstage debate between The Sporkful podcast host Dan Pashman (who believes a hot dog is a sandwich) and former Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman (who doesn’t).
Last year, however, Merriam-Webster stepped into the fray and declared that the hot dog was indeed a sandwich.
The dictionary publisher argued:
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.
The response to Merriam-Webster’s post was, well, about what you’d expect in our day and age: ironic dramatics. Just think, someone actually exerted physical effort and retrieved a gas canister, a box of matches, a dictionary, framed it in a shot, took a picture, then uploaded it online—over the definition of a sandwich.