"hot dog"--another correction

[Bruce Dykes]

-----Original Message-----
From: Gerald Cohen <gcohen at UMR.EDU>
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Date: Saturday, August 21, 1999 10:08 PM
Subject: "hot dog"--another correction


>    "It is believed Dorgan couldn't spell the word dachshund so he settled
>on dog--the caption read 'Come get your hot dogs'."
>
>    For the record, T.A. Dorgan was not only a  sports cartoonist but a
>sportswriter, and a very good one.   Most likely, he was in fact able to
>spell "dachshund," but in any case, his newspaper office surely had a
>dictionary handy. Are we really supposed to believe that this very literate
>man was too lazy to look up a word in the dictionary if he had doubts about
>its spelling?
>
>-----Gerald Cohen
>
>>HOT DOG (continued, of course)
>>
>>     If it weren't for a newspaper cartoonist, vendors at Pirate games
>>might still be barking, "Get you red hot dachshund sausages!"


Y'know, this is the bit that completely sours the theory for me. I find it
incredibly difficult to believe that hot dogs were ever called 'dachshund
sausages', especially in popular usage, and certainly not *before* they were
called hot dogs (Barry, did you follow the dachshund's trail in your earlier
posts?). I'll grant you isolated instants of some witty wordwise wags
cracking wise, but not popular usage.

Bruce