pre-hot dog

[Gerald Cohen]

At 6:10 AM -0500 10/30/03, Lois Nathan wrote:
>Hi sports fans, food word searchers and all interested parties,
>     www.bluemountain.com the other day was running a pop-up quiz where they
>ask you to guess the term for "hot dog" in 1905.  They claim it was "dachshund
>sausage", popularized by sportswriter Tad Dorgan.  Is this true?


The claim that "dachshund sausage" was a pre-hot dog term is incorrect.
See the ads-l archives for Barry Popik's first message of Sept. 22, 2003.
It's clear from Barry's search of "dachshund" and "sausage" that the
mental connection of these two terms came only AFTER the term "hot
dog" arose. The term arose based on the popular belief that dog meat
turned up in sausages at least occasionally, not from the idea that
the sausage looks like a dachshund.
Prior to "hot dog," the term was simply "(hot) sausage/frankfurter."

   The term "hot dog" arose in Yale college-slang (1894 or 1895) and
spread quickly to other colleges. TAD's two earliest "hot dog"
cartoons didn't come until 1906 and pertained to a six-day bike race
in Madison Square Garden, NOT to the Polo Grounds as is frequently
written. TAD's alleged Polo Grounds cartoon, which supposedly
launched the term "hot dog," never existed.

Gerald Cohen