"hot dog"--a hashhouse-lingo connection?

Gerald Cohen gcohen at UMR.EDU
Mon Oct 13 00:02:39 UTC 2003


It just occurred to me that hash-house lingo might have been one of
the mediums which helped spread the term "hot dog." If this really
did happen, "hot dog" as a feature of hashhouse lingo would have been
short lived, ending when the term passed into general usage (as with
eggs "sunny side up.")

  Below my signoff is a relevant item I'm including in a compiled
bibliography on "hot dog."

Gerald Cohen

Irwin, Wallace 1907. Letters of a Japanese Schoolboy ('Hashimura Togo').
        1907, 1908 by P. F. Collier & Son; 1909 by Doubleday, Page & Company
        (mentioned in an ads-l message sent by Barry Popik, April 19, 2001).
        p. 95:
        'Best nourishment may be obtained for 5 cents by ordering 3
sausages        from Frankfurt Germany with slice of toast.
        'Yesterday I go as customary to this.  As customary I say,
"Give me        the same, those 3 sausages from Frankfurter."
        'And Mr. Swartz, turning to cookeryman, cry with voice:
        "Hot-dog!"
        'Therefore I must not eat them food because it is
cannibalism.  If Mr.    Swartz is not speaking Slank talk, then he
should be sent to prison for    Pure Food Laws.'



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