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

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:50 PM -0400 7/4/08, Mark Mandel wrote:
>On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 3:46 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>  In 1901, the name "hot dog" began to overtake "frankfurter,"
>>>  "red hot," "dachshund," "frank" and "wiener."
>>
>>  Not quite, among the black Saint Louisans of my youth, for whom
>>  "frankfurters" and "wienies" were distinct
>
>Indeed?! How, pray tell?
>
>--
>Mark Mandel
>
For me, there's at least a connotative difference.  Franks for me are
more serious, at least potentially more flavorful and more ethnic,
e.g. in the form of Hebrew National all-beef franks (#wienies).
Wienies or wieners are what kids eat, the ones that are labeled
"extra mild" in the cooler at the supermarket.  Maybe I associate
"wiener" with, well, "I wish I was an Oscar Meyer wiener" and with
the Midwest more generally (I still remember the smell of the O.M.
processing plant on the way out to the Madison, WI airport), while
franks are what I grew up with in New York.  The color is even
different, the wieners being pale and unassertive.  "Hot dog" is more
of a superordinate cover term including "frank" and "wiener" as
hyponyms.  The very tasty Hummel's hot dogs sold in the deli sections
of markets here are indeed officially hot dogs, but I would also
refer to them as franks, never as wieners/wienies.

YM (and Wilson's) MV.

LH

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