T.A. Dorgan "hot dog" story-- discredited but still out there

[Mark Mandel]

As with every other kind of mistaken folklore, the persistence of an
incorrect etymology is unfortunate but hardly remarkable.

m a m

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 9:44 AM, Cohen, Gerald Leonard <gcohen at mst.edu>wrote:

> Barry Popik sent me a  cc. of the "hot dog" item below, and I now forward
> it to ads-l.  The T.A. Dorgan/Polo Grounds "hot dog" story is charming but,
> it turns out, fictional.  Dorgan arrived in NYC from San Francisco in 1903,
> and "hot dog" is well attested already in the 1890s.
>
> The persistence of an incorrect etymology is remarkable. The Polo
> Grounds/Dorgan story is a hardy perennial, and one of the few certainties in
> life is that at least once every year or two a journalist somewhere will
> print that story as legitimate.
>
> Gerald Cohen
> P.S. If Mr. Kogan (whose name, incidentally, is ultimately the same as
> Cohen) would like any detail about "hot dog," he need only ask.
>

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