Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 01:02:36 -0500

From: "Barry A. Popik" Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM

Subject: AOL features Metcalf-Barnhart book



Here I am, checking AOL news to see if we just engaged in the mother of

all world wars. So what do I see on AOL news?

"Book Documents 'American' Words."

This is from AOL's OnBooks: Literary News and Notes.



Book Documents Words as American as Apple Pie

By Donald M. Rothenberg

of The Associated Press



WASHINGTON--It is OK to sit in the bathtub and think highbrow thoughts about

potato chips and hot dogs. Nifty, in fact, because these are words that are

as American as apple pie.



A pair of word historians have collected their choices of "words that have

shaped America," choosing one for almost every year since English was first

spoken on this side of the Atlantic.



When it came to making a choice for a given year, they tried to select the

word "that made a difference," said Allan A. Metcalf of MacMurray College in

Jacksonville, Ill. They looked for words that reflected "how we look at

ourselves as Americans, what our concerns are and what our ideas are," he

said.



Metcalf and lexicographer David K. Barnhart are co-authors of "America in So

Many Words."

(...)

Hot dog is a play on an old joke that dog meat was used in sausages. The

first use of hot dog is traced to the Yale Record in 1895.

(....)



This may sound funny, but about three months ago--as I wrote on this

list--this very same Associated Press did a whole story on the hot dog, and

it was completely wrong, and I walked into their offices, and I was told they

weren't going to correct anything....