Meanings
plural sarnies · alternative sarny · alternative sarney
- UKinformalA sandwich.
Hello my flower, shall I fix up a cheese sarnie for you?
3 more examples
With their jock-straps pinching, they slouch to attention While queueing for sarnies at the office canteen.
1972, “Thick As A Brick”, Ian Anderson (lyrics), performed by Jethro TullIn fact no one was playing bingo, 10p or otherwise. Nor had the patrons been enticed by the complimentary shrink-wrapped sarnies and packets of cheese-and-onion on offer in the roped-off ‘Over 18s VIP area’, with its £500-jackpot fruit machines.
2012, Tim Moore, You Are Awful (But I Like You): Travels Around Unloved Britain, Vintage, →ISBN, page 7Just like Marple, there's a plaque at the London terminus [Paddington] commemorating a fictional character - a polite, friendly little bear from darkest Peru who has a penchant for marmalade sarnies.
2021 September 22, Stephen Roberts, “The writings on the wall...”, in RAIL, number 940, page 74Synonyms: sammie sanger, sango, sarmie, sambo, butty
- UKbiologyThe Sandwich tern.
Synonyms & antonyms
Origin
From sarn- (“perhaps from a dialectal pronunciation of the first syllable of sandwich”) + -ie. Alternatively, perhaps a misreading or an intentional dissimilation of samie (i.e. sammie), where the 'm' is mistaken for or replaced with 'rn'.
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with sarnie
All rhymes →Anagrams
Cite this entry
sarnie. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sarnie
“sarnie.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sarnie. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “sarnie,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sarnie.
Source: sarnie on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.