Dutch boterham), Bütterken (Lower Rhine dialect) to Bemme (Upper Saxon German) or Knifte (Ruhrdeutsch).

[1] The Russian language adopted the term buterbrod (бутерброд) from New High German (Butterbrot),[2] perhaps as early as the 18th century during the reign of Peter the Great.

In modern Russian the term has a more general meaning, whatever the ingredient on top of the slice of bread is.

From Russian, the term buterbrod was adopted into Azerbaijani, Belarusian, Georgian, Kazakh, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian.

A Butterbrot is commonly a single slice of bread and one ingredient on top of the butter or margarine.

For dinner or as boxed lunch, and often also for breakfast, the Butterbrot is eaten with something savoury on top, usually a large slice of cold meat or cheese or sliced German Wurst, or one of the countless cream cheese varieties, or even an entire Schnitzel or halved mince meat patty, or hard boiled egg slices or egg salad, or other spreadable creamy salads, or smoked salmon, or various savoury spreads like liverwurst, including also a wide range of vegetarian spreads.

The derivatives of the British sandwich and the Butterbrot of the German-speaking countries differ in some ways: The Butterbrot is usually made from the typical bread types of German-speaking countries, which are much firmer and fuller in taste, and with a crispy crust, compared to English sandwich slices.

Also the ratio of bread and "topping" is relatively constant, thick fancy sandwich fillings have almost no equivalent for the Butterbrot.