A "Hot Dog" Special for the 4th of July

On the 4th of July, there's no better time to dig into the origins of the term "hot dog." Visual Thesaurus editor Ben Zimmer recently took a look at the earliest known evidence for "hot dog" from Paterson, New Jersey. You can read his Word Routes column on the subject here, and you can hear him talking about the latest research today on NPR's Morning Edition.