Burger

How to spell burger

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce burger

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does burger mean?

1. nounA flat patty of minced meat or a meat-free substitute, usually served in a bun.

Burger in a sentence

• She ordered a burger with extra cheese and chips.

• The chef grilled each burger until it was cooked through.

Where does burger come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Burger is a shortening of hamburger, a word that originally meant 'of Hamburg', the major port city in northern Germany. In the late nineteenth century American menus advertised the 'Hamburger steak', a patty of minced beef in the style associated with that city. Speakers then wrongly split the word as 'ham' plus 'burger', even though the dish never contained ham; this reanalysis freed '-burger' to combine with new words, giving cheeseburger, veggieburger and many others. From the 1930s and 1940s 'burger' broke away entirely as a standalone noun for the patty or the filled bun. The unexpected spelling trap is that it has nothing to do with ham at all and is simply a place name, which also explains why it is so close to 'burgher', meaning a town citizen.

How the word is built

• burg- (from Hamburger, after the German city Hamburg)
• -er (clipping reinterpreted as a suffix)