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

[George Thompson]

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

Given that a large proportion of the voting public (and those politicians who cuddle up to them) haven't absorbed the fact of evolution yet. . . .

Though I believe that it is accepted by most that the earth is a sphere.

Copernicus/Galileo only took 500 years to sink in.  Check back in 2610 and you will no doubt find that Tad Dorgan has passed.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
Date: Monday, June 21, 2010 3:13 pm
Subject: Re: T.A. Dorgan "hot dog" story-- discredited but still out there
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

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

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