Is a Hot Dog a Sandwich? Merriam-Webster Rules

Yes, it is
By Polly Davis Doig,  Newser Staff
Posted May 29, 2016 9:07 AM CDT
Is a Hot Dog a Sandwich? Merriam-Webster Rules
This Feb. 9, 2016, photo, shows a Burger King "classic" hot dog in New York.   (AP Photo/Candice Choi)

Putting the kibosh on the great Memorial Day weekend debate you probably didn't know was happening, Merriam-Webster took to Twitter to declare, once and for all, that a hot dog is a sandwich, reports the New York Post. “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,” the dictionary's editors wrote in a list of 10 kinds of, well, sandwiches. “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.” Twitter erupted with cries ranging from telling sandwich believers to "get kicked in the shin," to "terrorism," to threats to become an Oxford English Dictionary convert, notes the Post.

As for those who contend that the hot dog itself doesn't qualify as a filling, per the Merriam-Webster decree: “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. Hence, a hot dog is a sandwich.” (More hot dogs stories.)

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