"Sausage dog" and the American "wiener dog" are almost too obvious to need explaining: a long, rounded, short-legged brown dog looks like a sausage in a way no amount of dignity can overcome. English speakers were calling them sausage dogs by the early 20th century.
The link ran in both directions. German immigrants sold long sausages in buns at American fairs and ballparks, and the snack was widely known as a "dachshund sausage" before the shortened "hot dog" took over in the early 1900s.
Cartoons and a persistent myth
There is a much-repeated story that a sports cartoonist coined "hot dog" at a New York baseball game around 1901 after drawing a dachshund in a bun, unable to spell "dachshund". Food historians have never found the cartoon, and the phrase appears in print earlier, so treat it as folklore.
What is true is that dachshund-and-sausage cartoons were everywhere in that era, cementing the association. The nickname stuck because it was accurate, affectionate and easy to draw.
