A sandwich is a food typically consisting of vegetables, sliced cheese or meat, placed on or between slices of bread, or more generally any dish wherein bread serves as a container or wrapper for another food type. Sandwiches are a popular type of lunch food, taken to work, school, or english muffin breakfast pizza to be eaten as part of a packed lunch. The sandwich is named after its supposed inventor, John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich.

The modern concept of a sandwich using slices of bread as found within the West can arguably be traced to 18th-century Europe. During the Middle Ages in Europe, thick slabs of coarse and usually stale bread, called “trenchers,” were used as plates. Initially perceived as food that men shared while gaming and drinking at night, the sandwich slowly began appearing in polite society as a late-night meal among the aristocracy. The sandwich is named after John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, an eighteenth-century English aristocrat. An alternative is provided by Sandwich’s biographer, N. Rodger, who suggests Sandwich’s commitments to the Navy, and to politics and the arts, mean the first sandwich was more likely to have been consumed at his desk.

The sandwich’s popularity in Spain and England increased dramatically during the nineteenth century, when the rise of industrial society and the working classes made fast, portable, and inexpensive meals essential. In the US, the sandwich was first promoted as an elaborate meal at supper. By the early 20th century, as bread became a staple of the American diet, the sandwich became the same kind of popular, quick meal as was already widespread in the Mediterranean. According to the story, following the Earl of Sandwich’s request for beef between two slices of bread, his friends began to order “the same as Sandwich”. The first written usage of the English word appeared in Edward Gibbon’s journal, in longhand, referring to “bits of cold meat” as a “Sandwich”.

Before being known as sandwiches, this food combination seems to have been known as “bread and meat” or “bread and cheese”. These two phrases are found throughout English drama from the 16th and 17th centuries. In Spain, where the word sandwich is borrowed from the English language, it refers to a food item made with English sandwich bread. It is otherwise known as a bocadillo. In the UK and Australia, the term sandwich is more narrowly defined than in the US: it usually refers to an item that uses sliced bread from a loaf.

An item with similar fillings but using an entire bread roll cut horizontally in half, is generally referred to as a roll, or with certain hot fillings, a burger. The verb to sandwich has the meaning “to position anything between two other things of a different character, or to place different elements alternately,” and the noun sandwich has related meanings derived from this more general definition. In Japanese, sando or sandoichi is used. Sandwiches have been widely sold in cafes, railway stations, pubs and diners since the invention of sliced bread in the 1920s.