Kingdom of Knuffel

Anything with a beginning, middle and end is a sandwich.

Stories are sandwiches.

A sandwich, by its defition, is a food item that consists of a)two pieces of bread and b)fillings. Therefore, ice cream burrito is not a sandwich. Neither is your classical hot dog. It can, however, be argued that if said hot dog consists of one sausage and two completely separated pieces of a bun, it could pass as a sandwich. While a bun separated into two pieces is technically still one piece of a single bun...so is sliced bread.
On the topic of stories - stories are totally sandwiches if they, in the form of a book, happen to be a filling between two slices of bread.

This discussion is funny.

Sandwich is an English word we also use in my language. Not to refer to any sandwich (we have own our word for that) but specifically for the ones made with sliced bread (which was not typically made here).
Therefore for me a sandwich is only something made by two pieces of sliced bread and fillings, and it's hard to think that something else - a burrito, a hot dog, whatever - is a sandwich.

Then again I could try to use my language's word bocadillo, which should - by definition - include all sandwiches.
(The actual definition is: Piece of bread cut in two inside of which you put or spread some food.)
But no, I can't think of those things as a bocadillo either. For dog's sake, I can't even think of a sandwich as a bocadillo!
For me the word refers to the traditional bread ones, not sliced bread (which most times is hardly a proper bread) nor tortillas nor buns.

Actually, I've given this a thought and I now firmly believe that books are indeed sandwiches. However, it has to be a hardback, made out of a block of pages ("filling") and two boards that "sandwich" it.

@Mynah
An interesting take, I respect your radical view. However, if the beginning and the end do not need to be made out of the same thing, then where do we draw the line? Is spaghetti (cheese on top of sauce on top of pasta) a sandwich? Where does the madness end?

@Tinushka and Amura

I see, so the important component is bread. However! I raise you an ice cream sandwich



There is no bread-- and yet, if it is not a sandwich, what should it be called?

I do call those ice cream sandwiches!

Not the Spanish word, cause they are not made of proper decent ol' fashioned bread, but sandwiches as in English cause they are made of sliced "bread".
Since sliced bread hardly resembles "real" bread, I can accept those slices without hesitation.

@HanafuruLove Your honour, it's not bread as such, it's the fact that it is made up of two entirely separate pieces (or slices) of bread or similar flour-based product. Substituting bread with two pieces of biscuit is fine by me, therefore, ice cream sandwich is indeed a sandwich.

Substituting bread with, let's say a cucumber (i.e. a typical filling) is not permissible and the result simply cannot be called a sandwich. Neither can we call a "sandwich roll" a sandwich, since it's typically made from one piece of bread rolled into...well, a roll.

So....

Is the "open face sandwich" just a myth, then, because it's a contradiction in terms?

the open face "sandwich" is a lie...