Spelling

smorgasbord

It ends in -bord. It is a Swedish table, not a fortress and not a plank.

  • Wrong: smorgasborg

    Right: smorgasbord

    Ends in -bord. Borg is Swedish for a castle.

  • Wrong: smorgasboard

    Right: smorgasbord

    Closer than you’d think, but still -bord.

The trick

It is two Swedish words. Smörgås is a sandwich, bord is a table. A sandwich table, which is exactly what the thing is.

Smorgasboard is the forgivable one. Bord and board are genuinely cognate, and English boards have been tables since long before anyone put a buffet on one. The instinct is right and the spelling is still wrong, because English borrowed the word whole.

Smorgasborg has no such excuse. Borg is Swedish for a castle or fortress—it is the back half of Göteborg and Helsingborg. You are describing a sandwich fortress.

Which, to be fair, is a better idea than the buffet.

Quite the smorgasborg of options.

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