"hot dog" T.A. Dorgan story in St. Louis Post-Dispatch

[Sam Clements]

I sent the PD an email just now, telling them in no uncertain terms that
their journalist is not exactly a good researcher.  Or something like that.

Sam Clements

----- Original Message -----
From: "Cohen, Gerald Leonard" <gcohen at MST.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 22:13
Subject: "hot dog" T.A. Dorgan story in St. Louis Post-Dispatch


> The T.A. Dorgan story on "hot dog" continues unabated.  The usually
> excellent St. Louis
> Post-Dispatch presents this story today as possibly being accurate, which
> is equivalent to giving credence to the views of the flat-earth society.
> There's no possibility that the T.A. Dorgan story is accurate. None. zero.
>
>  My thanks to Barry Popik for e-mailing me the two links below--the first
> is a St Louis Post-Dispatch story on the "hot dog" book that Barry Popik,
> the late David Shulman, and I published in 2004.  The second one is
> today's story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  If its author (Anthony
> Hagan) is ever curious about what really happened, he need only ask.
>
>      Meanwhile, on a general note, the T.A. Dorgan Polo Grounds hot-dog
> story shows the persistence of a folk etymology in the face of
> incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.  It's such a good story, why
> give it up merely because it's been disproven?
>
>      As for the two links, they're given below my signoff.
>
> Gerald Cohen
> P.S. The incorrect T. A. Dorgan story is about a baseball game at the POLO
> GROUNDS.  It wasn't about a polo match, as Hagan writes. But, hey, as long
> as facts don't matter, why sweat these details?
>
> [Two "hot dog" links]:
> ...
> Word sleuths dig up true origin of the term "hot dog"
> <http://docs.newsbank.com/g/GooglePM/SL/lib00170,1073CC625FF3B5E2.html>
>
> $2.95 - St. Louis Post-Dispatch - NewsBank - Dec 26, 2004
> ... was a staple of humor in the 19th century and in the 20th," says
> Gerald Cohen, ... As a part of speech, hot dog has had legs. Cohen and
> colleagues also ...
> ...
> ...
> http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/lifestyle/stories.nsf/cooking/story/BB2F537BBBB32657862574780066563C?OpenDocument
> Hot dogs has evolved into an all-American favorite
> By Anthony Hagan
> ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
> 07/02/2008
>
> <snip>
>
> In 1901, the name "hot dog" began to overtake "frankfurter," "red hot,"
> "dachshund," "frank" and "wiener." The story goes that Tad Dorgan, a New
> York Journal sports cartoonist, was attending a polo match on a blustery
> April day when he noticed vendors selling sausages kept hot in portable
> water tanks. The vendors were shouting: "They're red hot! Get your
> dachshund sausages while they're red hot!"
>
> Dorgan quickly drew a sketch of the scene, and not knowing how to spell
> dachshund, he called them "hot dogs."
>
> However, historians cannot locate the cartoon that supposedly coined the
> phrase. Others say the term was originated when Yale's student newspaper
> wrote about "dog wagons" selling hot dogs in fall 1894.
>
> <snip>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org