Cheeseburger

How to spell cheeseburger

12 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce cheeseburger

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cheeseburger mean?

1. nounA hamburger served with a slice of melted cheese on the patty.

Cheeseburger in a sentence

• He ordered a cheeseburger with fries and a milkshake.

• The diner is famous for its bacon cheeseburger and thick onion rings.

Where does cheeseburger come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a modern American compound that joins 'cheese' with 'burger'. The 'burger' part has a curious history: it began as the second half of 'hamburger', a word named after the German city of Hamburg, where minced beef patties known as 'Hamburg steak' were popular before the dish travelled to the United States in the nineteenth century. Once Americans wrongly but conveniently treated 'ham' as if it were the meat 'ham', the leftover element '-burger' was freed to stand on its own and combine with other foods, giving us 'cheeseburger', 'beefburger', and many more. 'Cheeseburger' itself is recorded from the 1930s in the United States, describing a hamburger topped with melted cheese. The word is spelled the same across all English dialects, and the only mild trap is remembering the double 'e' in 'cheese'.

How the word is built

• cheese (the dairy food)
• burger (clipping of hamburger, originally from Hamburg)