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T IS NOT UNCOMMON to find a variety of terms used in different languages for a single item in English. Anthropologists are very fond of citing items such as snow among the Eskimo and yams among the Trobriand Islanders with all of their rich terminological distinctions.1 Hoebel has also suggested that in certain American subcultures (e.g., the cowboy and the terms used for horse); there is also a profusion of terms for items for which the general population would use a single or very limited number of names.2 We are here concerned not with this type of terminological distinction but with the variation of terms used for the same item in various regions of the United States. Thus, this article falls within the general framework of dialect studies. The particular item selected for analysis is the submarine sandwich, for which we have found thirteen different terms in the United States. This great variety of names given to the sandwich is particularly impressive when comparison is made with other common sandwiches, such as the hamburger, the bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, and the ham and cheese sandwich, for which little variability in terminology is found. Recognition of this distinctive quality of the submarine sandwich is the basis of this discussion, which documents the variety of terms used and the proposed and often fanciful derivations of these terms. In addition, a preliminary schema for the classification of terms is presented. The submarine is 'a sandwich served on a large Italian roll containing a variety of Italian meat and cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, and garnished with olive oil and assorted spices'; it may sometimes contain alternative ingredients, such as tuna fish, roast beef, and boiled ham. In order to obtain our material, we conducted an extensive survey of current classified advertisements appearing in telephone directories for one hundred American cities selected on the basis of geography and population. In addition, telephone volumes from 1938 to 1943 and from 1945 to 1946 for Philadelphia were examined. An initial source in the classified volumes
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