Earliest Known Occurrence of the Term "Hot Dog" Pushed Back to 1886

[Jonathan Lighter]

Nice.

"Hot pup" is recorded elsewhere, IIRC, though not so early.

JL

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 8:22 AM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Poster:       "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Earliest Known Occurrence of the Term "Hot Dog" Pushed Back
> to
>               1886
>
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>
> The Tennessee provenance of the term "hot dog" now seems stronger, as I
> have found an 1886 citation from that state:
>
> hot dog (OED 1892)
>
> 1886 _Nashville Tennessean_ 14 Nov. 9/2 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers)
>
> "Hot stuff," "hot pup," "hot dog," slugs out the fiend who carries in one
> hand a tin cooking arrangement, and on the other arm a basket.  He is the
> wiener wurst fiend.  It is his cries that greet you as you enter the
> theater and regreet you as you come out.  He is the creature whose rolls
> make night hideous, and whose wares make dreams that poison sleep.  The
> luxury came originally from Austria.  Wiener means little and generally
> speaking, the purchaser gets a little the wurst of it.  (No diagram of this
> joke.)  Wurst means, in English, sausage; so that when one of these
> peddlers says wiener wurst to you he means do you want a little sausage.
>  The tin vessel which he carries is divided into two compartments.  The
> upper is filled with water, in which are about a thousand, more or less,
> skin sausages.  In the lower apartment is the alcohol stove that keeps the
> sausages hot.  In the basket he keeps his rye bread and horse-radish.  The
> sausage, sandwiched by two slices of bread !
>  which have been smeared with the horse-radish, make up the wiener wurst,
> which costs you a nickel.  Since Shakespeare asserted that nectar was the
> food the gods lived on, it has been discovered that wiener wurst is the
> stuff that fattens dudes.  The young men who sell the article are, as a
> rule, not modest.
>
> Fred Shapiro
> Editor
> YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS (Yale University Press)
>
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