sandwich (n.)
On November 24, 1762, Edward Gibbon recorded an evening at a London club where men were eating sandwiches. His journal provides an early written record of the food’s English name, already familiar enough to use without explaining it.1
The name is traced to John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich. The familiar account has him eating beef between slices of bread so that he could carry on gambling without leaving the table. It comes from the French travel writer Pierre-Jean Grosley, who visited London in 1765 and later described a minister spending twenty-four hours at a game with little else to eat.2
That account is difficult to confirm. Grosley was passing on a story, and the evidence for Montagu as a compulsive gambler is weak. His biographer N. A. M. Rodger suggested that eating while working at his desk might explain the association instead. That remains a suggestion too.2
The English name has a much firmer history than the famous card game. Gibbon’s entry shows it in use before Grosley’s visit. We can date that written record; the meal that first attached the earl’s title to the food is harder to recover.12
He packed a cheese sandwich for the journey.