Consider the burger

I was thinking of making a post about the definition of a sandwich but that particular semantic argument has been done to death and instead I am going to write about the definition of a burger.

I promise that I am not trying to merely quibble over definitions here but highlighting an interesting geographical gab in communication I have encountered a few times: The term burger generally means something subtly different in America¹ than it does in much of the rest of the English-speaking world.

To an American a burger is a clipping of the world hamburger: A dish consisting of a ground beef patty in a sliced bun. The patty is a key component of the dish and without it it would cease to be a burger. The burger is, of course, the true and ultimate symbol of the United States of America and America, taking pride in the creation of her icon, her ideals given form, displayed to the rest of the world the humble burger, and the rest of the world said “Got it! A burger is when you put stuff in between a sliced bun.” The bread was taken as the key component. The ground beef patty is a part in the Platonic ideal of a burger—if I ask one to imagine “a burger” it will be there as the default filling—but not a necessary piece definitionally.

This linguistic chasm thus leading inevitably to me being bewildered by people getting mad at me on an internet forum as a teenager for talking about a chicken fillet burger that I got at a takeway, because it’s clearly a nonsense term because if it’s a fillet then how is it a burger and what you’ve posted is clearly a chicken sandwich². But the chicken fillet burger is a mainstay of the menu of local chippers across Ireland and for many years I have seen restaurants offer portobello mushroom or halloumi burgers as vegetarian options. A burger, to the Irish mind, is simply something in a burger bun.

One might argue (and has been argued to me) that seeing as the burger is the food of the United States that we should align to the Yank understanding of the term to which I offer the counterargument: No.

Does this post have a point? Also no. I simply find linguistics interesting.