I like saying sammich, too. And Pullet’s description is exactly right.
Sammich, sammich, sammich!
Guess I look like a donkey then.
I dunno, a sketti and tater sammich sounds pretty darn good right now. It’s past my bedtime and now I’m hongry. Grrr!
Sammich is how it sounds when you try to say sandwich through a mouthfull of a particularly yummy one, right?
Sammiches are okay, I guess. But I likes me a sammy!
Whaddabout a sarny?
Count me in for the sammich (I can hardly even type it) = annoying.
Yay! I can annoy people with my love of the sammich!
By the way, I am sure we’ve had this discussion here before. IMO a sandwich is just a dull boring thingy on bread but a sammich is a meal! Although I mostly use the term for grilled sandwiches, because they are even more special.
[sub]And I agree Lindsey Lohan needs a sammich. So does Nicole Ritchie, Paris Hilton (but please don’t make us watch her eat it in her lingerie on a wet soapy car), Alicia Minshew (Kendall on All My Children - can’t watch that show anymore because I just want to shove a sammich down her throat and also because it’s insanely stupid).[/sub]
Now I’m hungry for a sammich!
I grew up in the rural south, but didn’t hear it used regularly until I moved to Nashville. When I was growing up, we pronounced it “samwidge”. :dubious:
I heard it in one of those rejected Valentine’s Day poems that make the rounds every year:
“Before I met you, my heart was so famished,
But now I’m fulfilled… So make me a sammich!!!”
It was originally Bob Dylan, rhyming it with “Sign Language.” At least that’s the first time I heard it. I always spelled it “sanguage.”
“Once again, the conservative, sanguage-heavy portfolio…”
The word sammich is almost never used in print by someone who is unaware of the correct spelling and pronunciation of the word sandwich. The imputation of some absence of knowledge or erudition over its use is self-aggrandizing anal retentive pseudo intellectualism, and is beneath contempt. In spoken conversation, of course, it is unseemly and simply rude to take exception with the common impromptu usage of the word, which almost always arises from the innocent ignorance of children, or the uneducated.
The most probable usage remaining is that segment of the educated and literate population that retains at least some small tattered remnant of emotional pleasure in evoking the times, and people who gave us happiness and sustenance with so simple a thing as a good sammich. An attempt to make the case that sandwich would do as a replacement in the third case evinces a obvious failure to perceive the intent of the speaker, probably do to having ones opinions fully formed, and desiring no information which might upset the narrow foundation upon which they rest.
So, put this sammich where it will do the most good, wherever that might be in your case. I’m gonna eat my sammich.
Tris
“The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards.” ~ Alexander Jablokov ~
I’ve been saying / heard it said about skinny girls ever since I moved to Atlanta, almost 10 years now.
This sure has been fun readin’ y’all, but it’s round about lunch time now, and Ima prolly havta run out and getta sammich. I’m gonna prolly getta coke, too. Anybody else wanna come? You don’t got to, I’m just aksin; ya know what I’m sayin’?
OK, squeat!
Trisk, that was just beautiful!
FWIW, among the >1 billion usenet postings archived at groups.google.com, the first usage of “sammich” as a substitute for “sandwich” dates back to January 16, 1991:
It would be interesting to trace whether use has become more frequent since then, but it would difficult to control for the increased use of usenet in general. Assuming overall usenet traffic has remained roughly constant over the past few years, however, here are some groups.google.com counts for the past few years:
2000: 944
2001: 1,110
2002: 2,380
2003: 1,680
2004: 1,010
2005: 523 (and counting)
Interpret this how you will.
The pronunciation change was most likely originally motivated by ease of articulation (the /w/ is bilabial, so why not prepare early by simplifying /nd/ to /n/ and then making it bilabial as well. This yields “samwich”, which I’ve also heard, and then “sammich” deletes the /w/ altogether.
Now, however, I would speculate that the pronunciation “sammich” has existed for a long time as a stable nonstandard variant of “sandwich” among certain regions and/or social groups.
And it’s also available for facetious use among speakers of standard English as a way of lightening things up or invoking a “down-home” feel. As has been touched on above, most of the uses on the internet are probably like this.
Using my newspaper database, I can find “sammich” used in print from 1947, and in every year since then. It was a term that didn’t seem to be limited to the South, although I don’t want to suggest that it didn’t originate there. I just haven’t searched enough to find.
Thanks! Have a bite of sammich!
Tris
Great. Now I’ve got the soundtrack from South Pacific running through my head. I guess that’s to be expected on “Sammich-haunted evening” such as this.