food - Is a hamburger considered a sandwich?


Today, a fellow user was given a CAPTCHA that looks like this:



captcha



He wasn't sure how to solve the CAPTCHA, so he asked me: Are hamburgers considered sandwiches? Well, I couldn't figure it out, so I'm asking here!



I know that the hamburger has in the past been called a sandwich. Wikipedia even says:



A hamburger (also called a beef burger, hamburger sandwich, burger or hamburg) is a sandwich consisting of one or more cooked patties of ground meat, usually beef, placed inside a sliced bun.



It explicitly says that it's a sandwich. And I suppose someone must have called it a "hamburger sandwich" at one point, but it sounds very odd to me—like someone put a piece of beef between two hamburgers. Anyway, I don't think that term is in common use, and it's easy to find examples like the following in print:



Also on offer are hamburgers, sandwiches, and salads.



And this seems to imply that hamburgers and sandwiches are different things. So I'm not sure I can take Wikipedia's word on this one.



Since I didn't know how to respond to the question, I brought it up in EL&U chat, where different people put forth different arguments. It was even suggested that the American English / British English difference might be relevant. But so far I don't think we've come to a conclusion, so I decided to ask on the main site.


I'm not sure what to think. All I have is speculation. Maybe hamburgers were once considered sandwiches by everyone, but now the terms are diverging and speakers have started to disagree. Or maybe it just depends on where you're from. Or maybe hamburgers exist in an interdeterminate state of quasi-sandwichhood.


So I ask you all:


Is a hamburger a sandwich?



Answer



No... I mean ... Yes ... I mean ... It's complicated.


Technically, of course a hamburger is a sandwich, by looking at a dictionary definition. Or to be pedantic (and give prelude to the complication), those things called 'hamburger' include all those properties that are defined and given the label 'sandwich'.


But what something 'is' and what something is 'called' and what its 'name' is (as Lewis Carroll said) are not (not necessarily) the same.


But that's almost too technical itself. A peanut is not a nut. A cardinal is a bird but doesn't have to have bird in its name to be a bird. A penguin is a bird even though many definitions of bird include 'flying'. Birds are now known to be dinosaurs, but that is a recent discovery (just like how at one time whales were considered fish).


The thing about 'technically', we don't normally use words that way. Is a cucumber a vegetable or a fruit? It's certainly a vegetable, formally or informally. But is it a fruit? It's not put in the fruit section with the apples and oranges and watermelon (when technically it is closely related to watermelon). No, a cucumber is considered a vegetable because it is green and not sweet, a lot like lettuce and celery.


Back to hamburger. So technically, yes, a hamburger is a sandwich, a very particular kind of sandwich. It has a lot of things unlike most sandwiches (a hot, grilled layer; a bun rather than sliced bread).


But, informally, it just doesn't seem like a sandwich. A BLT or chicken salad sandwich or corned beef on rye (mustard, no mayo) or even a grilled cheese all look like a usual sandwich. But a hamburger does not. There are many things about a hamburger (how it is prepared, where you can buy one, cultural associations) that are just not like a canonical sandwich.


So technically, yes, a hamburger is a kind of sandwich.


But if you did not include #5, the picture of a hamburger, in your answers, I'd say you're more like a human, and the robot would have included #5 because it is simple-mindedly rule based.


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