> Nonsense. You are assuming the cheese is on top of the burger, and thus a topping. This isn't true at all: the entity that is the cheesburger consists of both the patty of meat and the cheese. ... Your logic would argue that cheese can be a topping on a hamburger, but never a topping on a cheeseburger.

The cheese no more ceases being on top by being part of the cheeseburger than a roof stops being on top when it is fastened to the house.

> Your head may be a topping for your body, but it is not a topping for you -- since you include your body and head.

Your head may not be part of your body, but mine most certainly is a part of mine. :)

> When you write "The cheese on the meat of a cheeseburger is a topping" you are thus both and wrong and right.

This is most amusing if "both" refers to "cheese" and "meat".

> But your definition is poor anyway because "topping" in this context hardly means "on top of." Is the top half of the bun a topping? Of course not, it's part of the burger. Bacon is rightly considered a topping, even though it goes inside the cheeseburger and not on top of it.

This is the real argument. Topping certainly means "something on top"--at least, I'd never use it any other way. The top half of the bun is a topping, and bacon would not be if it were placed under the burger. What most people here apparently think of as a topping, I call a condiment or a garnish. Again, it's a difference of dialect, apparently. I see no reason to use "topping" identically to the other two words and lose its obvious and natural distinction. The top of a thing is a surface, but its topping is "a part or layer that forms the top."

> The cheese is a topping to the meat, but it is not a topping to the cheesburger since the cheeseburger *must* include cheese to exist at all.

Or: "The cheese is a topping to the meat, but it is not a topping to the cheesburger since the cheeseburger *must* be topped with cheese to exist at all."

It's a non sequitur in either case unless someone establishes that toppings are necessarily optional, which isn't the case. Refusing a topping at a fancy restaurant or a private dinner would be a faux pas unless health requires it. Admittedly, condiments are usually optional at burger joints. The same arguments people are trying to use to reject cheese's toppinghood are the arguments that I would use in favor of toppinghood. They are, in summary, that the formal and efficient causes of a cheeseburger are its being topped with cheese.

Try ordering "a cheeseburger with no topping of cheese." Don't explain or even give clues by accenting certain words. Simply insist on both parts. See how the server resolves the matter. You say you must receive a cheeseburger since "cheese is not a topping of a cheeseburger"; I think you may end up with a hamburger.

Ga"Done it"be