Credit for Barry Popik's work on "hot dog"

[Gerald Cohen]

>-----Original Message from Barry Popik, ads-l, 3 April 2004-----
>
>"HOT DOG" CREDIT TO BRUCE KRAIG AGAIN
>
>    Once again, Bruce Kraig gets credit for my "hot dog" work.  In
>the nine years since my work was published in COMMENTS ON ETYMOLOGY
>(the work has been in the HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN SLANG
>H-O for seven years), I have not received a single credit in any one
>of these articles.

<snip>


    I understand Barry's desire to see that his research on the origin
of "hot dog" receive at least passing mention in newspaper/magazine
articles about the term, and I'll do my best to see that this occurs;
his contributions on "hot dog" are extraordinary, particularly his
tracing the term back to Yale college-slang of 1894 or 1895.

    But it's a mistake to assume that no newspaper or magazine has yet
credited him for his work. Some well-deserved acknowledgment appears
in:

1) Wall Street Journal, Jan. 2, 2001 ("Hot Dog! 'Big Apple'
Explained", by Ed Zotti, page A20, cols 1-3): "...Popik established
that the term was current at Yale in the fall of 1894, when 'dog
wagons' sold hot dogs at the dorms, the name a sarcastic comment on
the provenance of the meat...."

2) Smithsonian, June 1999, ("Hot Dogs Are Us", by Donald Dale
Jackson, pp. 104ff. esp. p. 107): "...As for the first use of 'hot
dog' as a sandwich, a pack of word experts led by Prof. Gerald Cohen,
of the University of Missouri-Rolla, and Barry Popik, a New York
lawyer, have been pursuing the evidence for several years.
Popik...concentrates on studying old college magazines.  The earliest
hot dog mention he has come up with so far was in a story from the
_Yale Record_ of October 19, 1895, titled, 'The Abduction of the
Night Lunch Wagon' in which students 'contentedly munched on hot
dogs.'"

3) U.S. News and World Report, April 22, 2002, "Extreme Hobbies," by
Holly J. Morris, p. 70: "Word sleuthing. New Yorker Barry Popik has
challenged the prevailing theory of who coined the term "hot dog"
(Yale students in the 1890s, not food vendors in New York)."

Gerald Cohen