Etymology of Hot-Dog -- HL Mencken -- The American Language

H. L. Mencken's The American Language is one of my favorite books. I can pick it up at any time, and simply open it randomly and read a few pages, for pure joy and pure relaxation.

As an example, I quote in full, a footnote on page 186:

This is another guess. The inventor of the hot-dog was the late Harry Mozely Stevens, caterer at the New York Polo Grounds. The sale of sausages in rolls was introduced in this country many years ago, but Stevens was the first to heat the roll and add various condiments. According to his obituary in the New York Herald Tribune, May 4, 1934, this was in 1900. But sausages in rolls were then called simply wienies or frankfurters. Stevens himself used to say that the late T. A. Dorgan (Tad), the sports cartoonist, coined hot-dog, but he was apparently uncertain about the date. The name was suggested, of course, by the folk-belief that wienies were made from of dog-meat. In 1913 the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce passed a resolution forbidding the use of hot-dog on signs at Coney Island. See The Hot-Dog Mystery (editorial) in the New York Herald Tribune, June 2, 1931.

There you have it.