Hotdogs

[Coldfusion]

Why are hot dogs called hot dogs? is it something simple like to do with Dachhunds?

[New Forester]

I believe it came originally from a cartoon (1930s?) which featured a dachshund (then as now often called a sausage dog) being sold from a stall in a roll.  Apparently this caught on, and the food itself became called a hot dog.

 

Please somebody tell me this is not a myth?

[Quizmonster]

The word started life in 1890s USA to mean an expert or even a show-off. Barry Popick, a prominent linguist, says the phrase "hot dog" also began appearing in college magazines in the 1890s. Students at Yale University began to refer to the wagons selling hot sausages in buns outside their dorms as "dog wagons." Apparently, one of the popular stands was even dubbed "The Kennel Club." It didn't take long for the use of the word "dog" to become "hot dog". Popick found the first reference to "hot dogs" in an article published in the October 19th, 1895, issue of the �Yale Record' which referred to people "contentedly munching on hot dogs." O Henry, the writer, seems to have been the first to write �hot dog' in a widely-read publication - as opposed to a student mag - in a story of 1908.

[b_soucek]

theory 1: The popularity of the term hot dog is generally attributed to sports cartoonist T. A. "Tad" Dorgan, who caricatured German figures as dachshund dogs just after the turn of the 19th century. His talking sausage cartoons generally denigrated the cheap wieners sold at Coney Island, crassly suggesting they contained dogmeat. It was such bad publicity that in 1913, the Chamber of Commerce actually banned use of the term "hog dog" from signs on Coney Island. The term actually first appeared in print in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1900. Theory 2: German Americans brought us weinerwurst, German for Vienna sausage, which eventually shortened to wiener. Other German immigrants referred to smoked sausages as bundewurst, German for dog sausage. By the late 1920's, weinie roasts became the rage, with guests bringing their own hot dogs to roast over an open fire.

[Quizmonster]

Click http://www.hot-dog.org/facts/TheHFiles.htm

for a website on the subject. There you will find reference to both Popick - as in my earlier response - and to the (quote) "infamous" Dargan story offered above. You'll need to decide for yourself perhaps. However, there seems to be little doubt that - if the Yale magazine did publish the phrase in the 1890s - that was the earliest written reference. I daresay, the appropriate copy of it might be available in Yale Library even today!