hot dog, n.¹ — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

hot dog n.¹

[SE since c.1939, when it was served under that name by the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his guests, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the hot dog started life as sl. It prob. comes from heavy-handed mid-19C humour focusing on the supposed use of horse- and dog-meat as sausage filling, a concept that was accentuated by the 1843 scandal concerning the use of dog-meat for human consumption. The image was intensified by the use (c.1860) by German immigrants of Hundewurst, dog sausage, to mean smoked frankfurter sausages (larger sausages were Pferdwurst, horse baloney). The dachshund, of course, is a ‘sausage dog’. The term originated c.1895 at the Yale Club (as well as at Harvard, Cornell and other US ‘Ivy League’ colleges) where lunch wagons were known as ‘dog wagons’ and frankfurters known as ‘hot dogs’]

1. (orig. US, also doggie, hot pup) a spiced, heated sausage or frankfurter, served on a split roll and trad. garnished with sauerkraut and mustard; thus hotdoggery n., a place selling hot dogs.

[1881		Courier-Jrnl (Louisville, KY) 30 Oct. 8/4: ‘Hot sau-sage! [...] Tak’ a sausage. All hot!’ ‘Here’s the dog man,’ said one of a group of men [...] ‘Who’ll have a dog’].
1896		New Harvard Song Bk 142: Oh those little old hot dogs ! Those little old hot dogs! / We would put fourteen away Just before we hit the hay.
1900		E.H. Babbitt ‘College Words and Phrases’ in DN II:i 42: hot-dog, n. A hot sausage.
1905		Hawaiian Star (Honolulu) 28 Dec. 6/4: The ‘hot dog’ man is busy.
1910		O. Johnson Varmint 48: Mr. Stover’s heard about your hot dogs, way out in California.
1926		Van Vechten Nigger Heaven 6: Randolph Pettijohn had made his start in Harlem as a merchant of hot-dogs. [Ibid.] 8: Ah’s hungry, ‘Toly. Hones’. Gimme duh price of a dog.
1928		T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 47: I’ve been touring with those eggs for a week and they live on hot pups.
1929		in W. Winchell On Broadway 7 Aug. [synd. col.] Eat your doggies with a pickle, step up, folks, it’s just a nickel!
1934		Derby Dly Teleg. 12 Oct. 6/4: A Derby man who made a fortune in America as a ‘Hot Dog King’.
1938		Washboard Sam ‘Sophisticated Man’ 🎵 If you belongs to me / You would eat hot dogs any time I say.
1942		W. Pegler George Spelvin Chats 56: The American hot dog, a habit-forming sausage.
1946		J.F. Bardin Deadly Pecheron in Bardin Omnibus (1976) 79: They earned their living by [...] selling hot-dogs and floss candy.
1955		‘Blackie’ Audett Rap Sheet 169: Coming hell-for-leather toward us was another car [...] We thought sure they was more police, with us about to become the hot dog in the sandwich.
1963		G. Lambert Inside Daisy Clover (1966) 24: A hot-dog hit the spot.
1964		E. Wilson Earl Wilson’s N.Y. 320: At Coney Island is the world’s most famous hot-doggery, Nathan’s.
1999		Indep. on Sun. Rev. 5 Dec. 18: It sounds so much like the old Pearl & Dean music that you can almost smell the hot dogs.
2006		P. Shannon Davey Darling 137: My hot dog came dipped in sauce!
2010		(con. 1973) C. Stella Johnny Porno 338: They had been eating Nathan’s hot dogs.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1935		H. McCoy They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? in Four Novels 1983 9: A Syrian who had a hot-dog place.
1977		Rolling Stone 22 Sept. 44: Tom Parker was working a foot-long hot-dog concession on a carnival runway.
1986		B. Geldof Is That It? 70: There was a hot dog war on between rival operators.

3. (orig. US, also pup) the penis.

1925		in G. Legman Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1972) I 53: The little girl points to her brother’s penis, and asks, ‘What’s that, Mama?’ ‘That’s Johnny’s hot dog,’ says the mother.
1927		‘Butterbeans and Susie’ ‘I Wanna Hot Dog for My Roll’ 🎵 Well I want a dog without bread, you see / Because I carries my bread with me / I wanna hot dog for my roll [...] / I want it hot, I don’t want it cold / Give me a big one, that’s what I say / I want it so it will fit my bread.
1935		Lil Johnson ‘If You Can Dish It, (I Can Take It)’ 🎵 You got the hotdog, I got the bun, / Let’s get together and have a little fun, / If you can dish it, I can take it.
1966		Trimble 5000 Adult Sex Words and Phrases.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 50: the penis [...] pup (fr sl pup = frankfurter).
1978		L. Kramer Faggots 320: Front porch, gadget, hammer, honker, hose, hot dog.
1980		Maledicta IV:2 (Winter) 193: The grocery, the butcher’s and the sweet shop are all represented as well as the greengrocer’s. Thus there is […] hot dog, pud, pudding (older terms for sausage), meat, gristle, bone.
1996		Penguin Bk of More Aus. Jokes 193: What’s the definition of suspicion? When your hotdog’s got veins.

4. (US) a homosexual; also attrib.

1975

J. Carr Bad (1995) 44: I’d known a lot of hot-dog guys before.

5. (orig. US) a piece of canine excrement.

1997

Roger’s Profanisaurus in Viz 87 Dec. n.p.: hot dog n. An egg delicacy – something of an acquired taste –famously enjoyed by the gay cult actor Divine. v. To eat said morsel, freshly laid.

hot dog n.1

hot dog n.¹